Tag: Fallen Angel

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Fallen Angel artwork by J.K. WoodwardAfter months of waiting, I finally picked up the newly-relaunched Fallen Angel today. This was a bit of a challenge. My usual comic store hadn’t ordered it for some reason (despite the “Fallen Angel” note on my pull list. Maybe it was still listed under DC? They figured out when Angel moved from Dark Horse to IDW, and even picked the right cover for me.

So I stopped by my other regular comic store this afternoon—the one near home instead of near work—and picked up Fallen Angel and Night Mary. In the rain. And had to get them not only back to the car, but from the car up three flights of stairs, around the apartment building, and up to the landing without getting them wet. While carrying three bags of groceries and two umbrellas.

Anyway, the book is well worth it. Peter David launches a new story with all the major players 20 years later. Some of the dynamics have changed, some are the same… and some look about to be altered significantly. Lee still fights the good fight in Bete Noire, Juris is still Magistrate, even Dolf still runs his bar. But there are new players in town, including Juris’ wife and 18-year-old son (who he thinks is his firstborn)… and a figure from Lee’s past who comes to her with a tantalizing offer (an actual “Whoa!”-out-loud moment). It looks like we may be learning the Fallen Angel’s origin soon. We’ve only just learned her real name…

Yes, this comic is good. It’s pricy at $3.99, but the story’s great, and J.K. Woodward’s art is fantastic. (See the cover? The whole thing looks like that!)

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Fallen Angel artwork by J.K. WoodwardChadwick H. Saxelid reviews the relaunched Fallen Angel book, which should be out sometime next month. There was a preview a couple of months ago, with just the first few pages of J.D. Woodward’s artwork, and it was stunning.

The series never sold well enough for DC, but the numbers were good for an indie book—and it was creator-owned. Peter David shopped it around a bit, and IDW offered Lee, Juris and Bete Noire a new home. The dark fantasy setting should fit in quite well there.

At the risk of repeating myself: I am so looking forward to this!

(via Peterdavid.net)

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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 →