Screwed By The Network / Comic Books

• Dark Horse's Conan the Barbarian line has suffered this ever since 2012; first they encouraged Brian Wood (who was new to the franchise) NOT to follow the continuity of the previous series while at the same time adding a new artist every three issues. The follow up series Conan the Avenger was better written and more faithful but the art was often lambasted. The final series, Conan the Slayer, had seen the release dates of issues repeatedly pushed back.
• Several X-Men books have suffered this over the year:
  • Mutant X was never supposed to replace X-Factor; it was supposed to run for 12 issues before going away and being replaced with a relaunched X-Factor comic. But early sales for Mutant X were far better than X-Factor's sales at the time, so the book lasted for 32 issues before being cancelled.
  • Deadpool, Cable and X-Force (under Peter Milligan and Mike Allred) were cancelled and relaunched as Agent X, Soldier X and X-Statix. The relaunches for both books failed and while Agent X and Soldier X were thankfully mercy-killed and Deadpool and Cable restored to normalcy soon after, X-Statix rebounded from a god-awful first year with an arc involving the resurrection of a vain, self-righteous pop musician. Unfortunately, the singer was SUPPOSED to be Princess Diana but was changed at the last minute. As a result, Milligan and Allred became disillusioned and asked to leave the book, which was promptly cancelled with issue #26.
    • For years, it's been a popular fan rumor the name changes were to get out of paying Rob Liefeld royalties - an apparently false rumor, since Liefeld hadn't actually been getting royalties at the time. ^note This is the fun part: Rob created the concept of Cable, but not the character of Nathaniel Summers. As well, he created the concept of Deadpool, but other creators formed the guy under the mask. Their big idea was to strip those things away and create new series using what was left.
• The Red Circle DCU revamp of the MLJ/Archie heroes has plenty of these: The original plan of using the original versions in The Brave and the Bold was scrapped in favor of launching them in a series of one-shots that immediately spun off into a pair of ongoings that debuted in the midst of Blackest Night and were the only two books to not tie in to that event, which crippled sales for them right out of the gate. It also had the $3.99 cover price with second feature format which also turned off readers. The only mainline DC book to give a major guest spot was when the Shield showed up in the low-selling Magog. DC is currently publishing a Mighty Crusaders mini-series to finish off the deal.
  • And DC has ended the Red Circle deal, and the rights are reverting back to Archie Comics!
  • And to make matters even worse, DC solicited the Mighty Crusaders mini-series (and the accompanying introductory special for the series) as a trade paperback, but cancelled it because it did not garnered enough pre-orders!
  • According to the Word of God, the Red Circle heroes (as well as most of the Milestone Comics heroes) were barred from appearing in other titles because DC would have to pay royalties for each guest-spot. So that's why save for Static, the Milestone and Red Circle heroes rarely got to appear in other, more popular titles.
  • Technically, DC's deal for the Red Circle heroes will end on January 2012!
  • Archie themselves are reviving the heroes in 2012 as the New Crusaders... as part of a web-only subscription service where the new stories are six pages each!
    • To make it less annoying, the six-page installments of New Crusaders are going to be WEEKLY, which means 24-30 pages a month for the series, at a subscription fee of $2.99-$3.99 a month, plus thousands of pages of classic stories, as well!
    • At least Archie is offering a free print preview of New Crusaders as part of the upcoming Free Comic Book Day version of Mega Man (Archie Comics) #1!
    • And there is going to be a print version of New Crusaders, which will debut in August, three months after the digital version will debut!
• DC's highly controversial treatment of Stephanie Brown. Made the centerpiece of a highly controversial story complete with being written massively out of character and became a victim of Women In Refrigerators. She got an ongoing after she came back but was cursed with Replacement Scrappy status due to replacing the fan favorite Cassandra Cain in the role of Batgirl. When her series proved to be a massive critical success (becoming the only DC book to get into USA Today's top ten comic books), it got cancelled early to make room for the company wide reboot. She was promised a place in the Smallville Comic, only for her to be replaced by Barbara Gordon (and as recently discovered, not because Barbara was more well known, she was specifically singled out and removed, Gordon was picked after Stephanie was removed). Its been suspected that DC Editor Dan DiDio is the one responsible for this treatment, as it started after he got in charge, he was connected to most of her poor treatment, and has been the most hostile towards fan critique about it.
• Don Rosa like almost all the other Disney comics artists never got any royalties for his work, only one-time payments based on the number of pages. This led to him barely scraping by financially for all of his career, mostly supported by the higher wages of his wife and together with his deteriorating eyesight, eventually made him depressed, lose the passion for his work and retire. He explains all this in his epilogue to the Don Rosa Collection, which Disney refused to print, resulting in him putting it online for everyone to read.
• Marvel's treatment of the X-Men and the Fantastic Four following their entry into the film industry, especially from 2012/2013 onwards. 20th Century Fox owns the film rights to those comics, and was making films in both series in order to hold onto the rights, so Marvel steadily whittle down the profiles of the comics they're based on in order to give less free promotion to Fox's films. They canceled the Fantastic Four comic outright in 2015 and sent the team their separate ways, and the X-Men didn't undergone anything quite as drastic, it's still clear that Marvel was moving them Out of Focus. Most notably, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were retconned so that it turned out they're not mutants — something that can only be described as a deliberate jab at Fox, owing to those two characters showing up in separate incarnations in both Fox's X-Men films and in the MCU thanks to complicated legalese regarding their status as mutants. The point at which it became obvious that Marvel was doing this to screw Fox was when they went after the merchandising for the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, with toy lines for the series being pared down and T-shirts based on classic Marvel covers seeing characters from those series replaced with characters from the MCU. When Marvel's executive editor Tom Brevoort was asked about it in a Tumblr Q&A, he stated point-blank that the movies were the reason why.
  • Since approximately 2016, the X-Men have been drifting back into focus. This is partly, perhaps, because of backlash against their being shuffled aside, a general dislike of the Inhumans (who managed to become Unintentionally Unsympathetic, particularly during Inhumans vs. X-Men), and the drastic mishandling of Scott Summers (attempts to make him 'mutant Hitler' went down like a lead balloon). However, another likely reason is that Disney's then-pending buyout of Fox led to Marvel finally managing to reacquire the X-Men film rights, thus allowing them to be introduced into the MCU.
• In a weird case of this combining with Adored by the Network, we have Carol Danvers' Captain Marvel. In an attempt to make the book more popular, Marvel relaunched the series. This gave it a boost from people who picked up the first issue because it was a first issue and therefore a good starting point... and a whole lot more people losing track of the book or forgetting to put the relaunched book on their pull list, and fans reading from the trades waiting for a Volume 2 that never came. The book bled readers with stunning speed, causing Marvel to try to relaunch it again to improve sales... and then they relaunched or renumbered it three times over the course of about three years, and in June 2017, Carol was sitting pretty at 129th place on the sales charts after just six issues. The newly relaunched series, The Life of Captain Marvel, has done somewhat better in a more respectable 71st place, around the same level as contemporary Spider-Man comics.