Grumpy Old Fan | Going on about ongoing series, Part One

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First DC announced (via the May solicitations) the cancellation of five titles. Now it looks like the “First Wave” line is being shown the door.

Blogger/podcaster extraordinaire Al Kennedy suggests that “First Wave” might have benefited from a little multiversal-crossover action. I tend to agree, although I think including versions of Batman (and other pulpy DC characters like the Blackhawks) was something of a backdoor crossover.

While that’s a topic for another day, it made me wonder about the general trends within DC’s ongoing series. Thus, starting today I want to take a much longer look, ‘way back to the start of Big Event comics in 1985. DC has launched hundreds of ongoing series since then, and I want to see what made the difference in those series’ successes. This will take a while — maybe two to three posts — but I hope it’ll be worth it.

[Thanks as always to Mike's Amazing World Of DC Comics, an invaluable source of data for any DC fan.]

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