Tag: Peter David

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[Cover for DC Fallen Angel TPB 2]All right! DC has announced that they will be releasing a second collection of Peter David and David Lopez’ Fallen Angel!

The creator-owned series lasted for 20 issues at DC before low sales finally did it in. After the cancellation, IDW approached Peter David and offered the series a new home at their company. With new artist J.K. Woodward, it’s gone on to sell quite well at IDW.

Previously, DC had only reprinted issues #1-6 in TPB form as Fallen Angel vol.1. Interestingly, they re-issued it last month to coincide with the first collection from IDW, Fallen Angel: To Serve in Heaven.

Presumably one or both books sold well enough that DC has decided it’s worth reprinting the rest of the series. According to DC’s website, volume two will go on sale in January, and will collect issues #7-12. That includes the 5-part “Down to Earth,” introducing Black Mariah, and the flashback of Lee and Juris’ first meeting in New Orleans.

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Fallen Angel TPB #1 (DC) coverIt seems that there will be two Fallen Angel collections on the shelves this August. To coincide with IDW’s book collecting the first story arc of their series, DC is reprinting their TPB of the first few issues of the original series.

Fallen Angel started as a creator-owned book at DC and ran for 20 issues. DC published a TPB collection of the first 6 issues, but stopped there. As much as the cancellation rankled, DC gave it a lot of opportunities… it just wasn’t a good fit for the DC brand (it probably would have thrived at Vertigo) or the DC sales targets.

Fallen Angel TPB #1 (IDW) CoverAfter it was canceled, Peter David took the series to IDW, with J.K. Woodward taking over the art from David Lopez. The first arc set in place a new status quo, and finally answered two key questions: Was Lee really a fallen angel? And if so, how did she fall? Fallen Angel proved to be a better fit with IDW, who immediately extended it from a 5-issue mini to an ongoing series when sales figures started coming in.

I highly recommend reading DC’s trade, which Amazon still has in stock. If you like that, pick up the next issue of the monthly. (Keep in mind that the art style is vastly different, and twenty years have passed, story-wise, between the end of one series and beginning of the next.) I don’t know how easy it’ll be to pick up the back issues, but the IDW trade will be out soon.

And who knows? If capitalizing on IDW’s success works out for DC, maybe they’ll see the light and collect the remaining 14 issues!

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Last week Peter David signed an exclusive deal with Marvel Comics. The contract has exceptions for stuff he’s already working on, like the Spike mini-series and Fallen Angel (both at IDW). The comments on that post linked to an interview at CBR, which had this interesting remark:

DC has been great and I’m very pleased and relieved, bizarrely enough, that they cancelled “Fallen Angel.” Had they not, I’d be in a very tough position because if they were still publishing it and Marvel wanted me to go exclusive, well they certainly wouldn’t have let me keep writing “Fallen Angel” for DC. So, I would have had to make a really tough choice—weigh a comic book I love against my family’s security and health. Fortunately enough I was spared having to make that decision.

It reminded me of the time I realized that VR.5‘s cancellation freed up Anthony Stewart Head to join the cast of Buffy. Or that the Sci Fi Channel turned down the B5 spinoff Crusade in part because they’d just launched Farscape.

I do wonder, though. JMS also had several books grandfathered in when he signed an exclusive with Marvel. Those included Rising Stars and Dream Police at Top Cow… and a Babylon 5 graphic novel for DC/Wildstorm (which has yet to be finished). I suspect the facts that it was a media license and a one-shot probably helped.

It’s also interesting to read Peter David’s comments about Fallen Angel and Icon. You’d think Marvel’s Icon label would be perfect—bigger circulation, lower price, still creator-owned—but IDW put so much effort into relaunching the book that he felt it would be wrong to just pack it in and take it to another publisher as long as they still wanted to publish it.

It would have been odd, though. I wonder how many books have, at different times, been published by both Marvel and DC? The only one that comes to mind right now is Elfquest. Marvel reprinted the original series through Epic in the 1980s, and DC is now handling the manga-sized reprints, the Archive editions, and new stories (still from Wendy and Richard Pini).

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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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My regular comic store, Comic Quest, didn’t get any copies of Peter David’s Spike: Old Times. Yesterday I checked at Comics Toons and Toys. They were also sold out. Today I started looking around more of the Orange County area.

First step: Mile High Comics. I figured it was a long shot, since they’re the most well-known comic store on the internet, but I wasn’t in a hurry to read it, and it would save me the trouble of driving around the county. Naturally, they didn’t have it.

So I started calling stores I knew. As I was about to start, I noticed an email on SuperHeroNews saying, “Mile High Comics in LA, burned down last night, more information as we get it.” The first store on my list was Netherworld Comics, which used to be a Mile High store, but is in Garden Grove, not Los Angeles. Their phone isn’t picking up. And they’re still listed as an affiliate on Mile High’s website. And there aren’t any other Mile High stores in southern California. This doesn’t look good for Netherworld. Edit Sep. 7: Yes, it was them [archive.org]. Figures. I’d only been in there a couple of times, but it was a nice store.

Okaaay… Next step: Diamond’s Comic Shop Locator. Unfortunately it only lets you search by ZIP code, and only shows the nearest three. Since I’d already been to two of the stores, I only got one phone number out of it. No luck there.

Time to do it the old-fashioned way: the phone book. (Katie remarked, “There’s nothing wrong with being old-fashioned, especially about a book called Old Times.”) There are surprisingly few comic stores in central Orange County. I only got three more numbers out of it, and one of them specializes in vintage comics. Not surprisingly, none of them had any copies either. (One offered to order it for me, but I simply declined rather than pointing out that it was already sold out at both the publisher and distributor.)

Next stop: eBay…

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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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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.)