Well, this is interesting.
After all, we’re less than a month out from the high-profile USA Today announcement of the Thanos: Son of Titan mini-series, and suddenly the first issue is announced as cancelled with no mention of a resolicitation. What makes this especially odd is that orders weren’t even in for the first issue; it was only in the most recent round of solicits, with Previews only hitting stores this past Wednesday, so it’s clearly not disappearing because of low orders. Whatever has happened to the book has clearly happened relatively recently; writer Joe Keatinge was promoting the series at San Diego Comic-Con two weeks ago, appearing on Marvel’s Next Big Thing panel to talk about how excited he was about the chance to write Thanos as well as giving interviews about the project.
Conspiracy theorists online have already suggested that Thanos creator Jim Starlin’s displeasure with the use of the character without receiving any notice or royalties may be too blame (Not to mention his hint that maybe he has legal claim to the character, having created him before he worked for Marvel), but historical precedent leaves me unconvinced that that would really have too much of an effect on Marvel’s plans (See #9 on this list, for details), to be honest – especially because none of the other announced (reprint) Thanos titles have been cancelled as yet. Instead, I suspect something more mundane involved internal editorial displeasure with the direction of Son of Titan itself, with the cancellation either coming as an opportunity to kill or retool a project that was being seen as having come off the rails.
If nothing else: Does anyone else have a sense of deja vu about this whole thing? Apparently, five issue minis about villains are cursed at Marvel…
Update: Leave it to Stephen Wacker to offer some hints about what happened:
For those interested, plans have indeed changed on Thanos. Nothing too dramatic, we just jumped the gun a bit. @joekeatinge and Rich Elson both have projects coming up in the Spidey office that we’ll be announcing soon. They’re bloody great!
So now we, uh, kinda know?
