Tag: Fallen Angel

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Fallen Angel is ending with #20, and Babylon 5: The Memory of Shadows has fallen through.

However, JMS has always said, “If they can do a Brady Bunch movie, you can be sure that sooner or later, somebody’s going to do a B5 movie.” Even better, it turns out that while Warner Bros. owns the B5 TV show lock, stock and barrel, JMS owns the movie rights…so he’s in a position to make sure that whoever does do a B5 movie will get it right. “To that end,” he says… “I can wait.”

As for Fallen Angel, I suspect the timing of the decision means DC either wasn’t waiting for sales after all, or was going on pre-orders from stores. Peter David cryptically remarks, “We are not, however, quite dead yet.” It’s not clear what he means, but the characters are creator-owned, and the series isn’t tied to the DC Universe, so it’s entirely possible for them to pop up again at another publisher. Only time will tell.

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[Cover]In the first week of March, Peter David’s series Fallen Angel returns from hiatus with issue #19, the first part of a 2-part crossover with Sachs and Violens, a classic pair of Peter David/George Perez characters.

Fallen Angel follows the enigmatic title character through the city of Bete Noire, Louisiana. Lee—known to some as the Fallen Angel—protects the city at night, but the city isn’t sure it wants her there. Duality and moral ambiguity are the series’ central themes, as it becomes clear that you can’t always map protagonist to heroine or antagonist to villain. Intrigue and action with a twist of film noir.

So far, DC hasn’t ordered anything beyond #20, but no one can confirm whether the series has officially been cancelled. Word is that if the next two issues sell well enough, the series could continue. If not, it’s toast.

We’re down to the wire. If you’re curious, pick up the Fallen Angel TPB (collecting issues #1–6). See if you can find—or borrow—the later issues. And if you’re interested at all in seeing the series continue, pick up or pre-order Fallen Angel #19–20.

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The current tenuous situation with Fallen Angel reminds me of one of those curiosities of the comic book market: the relationship between episodes in magazine form and longer stories in book form.

Most comics in the US/Canadian market are released as individual issues, with maybe 22 pages of story and a bunch of ads. Longer works are often released as trade paperbacks (TPBs), but often don’t sell as well because, let’s face it, $19.95 is a much bigger chunk of change than $2.50. However, many series are collected into TPBs once the publisher figures the original issues have mostly been tapped out, often adding additional material like sketches, character designs, or occasionally an entire epilogue. (Kingdom Come and Death: The High Cost of Living both used that trick.) Advantages: they fit on a shelf, they’re often better paper and more durable, you can get an entire 6-part story in one chunk… and most importantly, they can fit on bookstores’ shelves, bringing them to an entirely new audience.

During the 1990s, only the most popular storylines would get the TPB treatment, but as the graphic novel market has grown, the trend has been toward collecting every issue of a series, so that whether you get the original issues or the collections, you still get everything. This has led to two controversial phenomena: writing for the trade and waiting for the trade. Continue reading →

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Via PeterDavid.net:

To promote Fallen Angel, DC re-released the first issue as a free promo edition and sent it out to comic stores this week.

It seems someone’s already selling it on eBay as a “Hard-To-Find Retailer Variant.” In fact, based on the auction start time, it looks like it went up Thursday afternoon, within hours of it being available to, uh, “sell.”

Keep in mind that this has the word “FREE!” emblazoned in at least 48-point type on the cover (you can read it clearly even in the thumbnail).

Of course at $6.49+$3.85 shipping it’s already creeping up on the cost of the trade paperback ($12.95) that contains the first six issues. Anyone who’s just curious about the book and can’t find the promo copy would probably be better off ordering the trade instead.

This is the kind of thing you’d expect on Opposite Day. Selling something free. Marketing the reprint as a collectors’ edition. Heck, just targeting the collectors’ market for a book that’s more suited to people who actually read comics.

“We’ll clean ’em out the American way.
For something free, they don’t care what they pay!”
—The Engineer, Miss Saigon

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About a year ago, I posted recommendations for Girl Genius, Fables, and Halo and Sprocket. Now I’d like to recommend a few more.

[Cover of Planetary #20]Planetary, by Warren Ellis and John Cassiday. The premise of Planetary is “archaeologists of the impossible.” Elijah Snow, Jakita Wagner and The Drummer are the field team for Planetary, an organization devoted to uncovering the secret history of their world. Each issue focuses on a different genre or archetype. There’s a Godzilla issue early on, there’s a Vertigo issue, one focuses on Hong Kong action films, and the latest is reminiscent of Rendezvous with Rama. Along the way, Planetary has uncovered a series of conspiracies — some positive, such as the Pulp Heroes of the 1930s, and others malicious, such as the mysterious Four (a twisted analogue of the Fantastic Four) who may be the most powerful people on the planet — if they’re still human. After a long absence, the series is now being published every two or three months. It’s expected to run around 25 issues, although it could take longer to wrap up the story. The first 18 issues and several specials are collected in four graphic novels. (Bimonthly/quarterly from DC/Wildstorm.)

[Cover of Fallen Angel collection #1]Fallen Angel, by Peter David, David Lopez and Fernando Blanco. The fictional Louisiana town of Bete Noire is a magnet for strangeness, ruled by the enigmatic Magistrate Juris during the day and protected by the equally enigmatic Fallen Angel by night. But nothing is as it seems. Is the Fallen Angel a heroine, or just a loose cannon? The main focus of the series is moral ambiguity and duality. Can you map “order” and “chaos” to “good” and “evil?” What happens when a force for good turns out to be sinister, or when someone once evil seems benign? Or when someone uses cruel methods to achieve a noble goal? The first few issues have been collected as a graphic novel. Suggested for mature readers – there’s usually violence and sometimes sex. (Monthly from DC Comics)

[Cover of Powers volume 2 #1]Powers, by Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Avon Oeming. Bendis is known for his crime fiction, and that’s the focus of Powers. The book follows homicide detectives Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim as they investigate the deaths of super-heroes. Up until recently, their world was one where super-heroes were the A-list celebrities everyone followed, and the Powers world is as full of lawsuits, grudges, politics and sex scandals as Hollywood. That was volume one. Things have changed: after a particularly powerful hero went mad and rained destruction across the globe, world leaders have declared all powers illegal. Volume two picked up last month with the city trapped in a gang war between super-villains — with no heroes in sight. The first series has been collected in six graphic novels, with one more yet to be published. Another mature readers title – there is sometimes very graphic violence and sex, despite the cartoony style. And if you’re at all sensitive, don’t read the letters column! (Monthly, previously from Image Comics and now at Marvel/Icon.)