Just in time for the national celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, Black comics fans were treated to some less-than-pleasant news this morning …
As part of the six new May books being announced today, DC Comics has also announced six cancellations, all ending on their eighth issues. Men Of War, Mister Terrific, O.M.A.C., Hawk And Dove, Blackhawks and Static Shock …
… it is notable that two of the books, Mister Terrific and Static Shock featured a single male black lead, leaving Batwing. A modicum of self recognition is superhero titles is sometimes necessary, and it is a shame that this has been denied many now. [sic] But sales on both these titles were rather low, comparatively. Although they both will have sold tens of thousands more copies than they would have done without a DC Relaunch.
Admirable that DC grand poobah Dan DiDio allowed his own title to be cancelled, it's also worth noting is that DC went from employing 100 percent of the Black writers in mainstream comics — Eric Wallace and Marc Bernardin — to having zero with this move. Neither Wallace nor Bernardin had a comment as of press time.
In the mean time, it’s interesting to note that we again are finding it hard to secure a place in the Direct Market environment, as the retailers who buy the books were unable to market to our demographic successfully enough for these titles to have sales figures strong enough to survive. Having two Black writers at DC and none at Marvel was interesting enough, but now Black voices have been silenced in the "mainstream" industry, and only one DC book with a Black lead — Batwing, written by Judd Winick — remains.
As we so often do, times like this make us miss Dwayne McDuffie …
[Source: Bleeding Cool]
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