Chelsea Cain’s and Kate Niemczyk’s Mockingbird has been one of the more critically beloved titles to come out of Marvel’s 2015 All-New All-Different relaunch. Unfortunately, like many recent critically lauded titles such as Omega Men and Prez before it, Mockingbird ends with today’s release of issue #8.

Taking to Twitter, Cain announced the news with an impassioned plea:

Interestingly, the decision to cancel Mockingbird was made without waiting to see how trade sales of the book fare.  Volume 1 was released today as well.mockingbird

23 COMMENTS

  1. Maybe its story and quality is not good enough for people to consider buying it? Maybe it doesn’t have to do with the fact that the protagonist is a woman?

    I don’t know. Never read it. I already read non-Marvel comics with women that kick ass.

  2. This has to be one of the dumbest and most internetty comments I’ve ever read!

    “You’re premise is totally wrong. Maybe. I’ve never actually read the thing the article is about.’

    For the record, this was a great book and had more style and character than most Mockingbird stories I’ve read over the past 25 years (and I like Bobbi, I check out a book when she’s in it whenever they come out). Too bad that it got canceled, maybe if the trade does well we can get a follow up series or something.

    I hardly ever comment, but that was such a wtf stupid thing to say. I it was a troll, good job I guess.

  3. This book was an incredible read start to finish. I loved the first “puzzle box” arc — smart storytelling, through and through, that demanded *and rewarded* re-reading. It’s not often that a book merits the $3.99 price tag, but this one did. Incredible art, too. Many thanks to Chelsea Cain and Kate Niemczyk for a stellar read, and to Joëlle Jones for drawing that backdoor pilot for the SHIELD 50th, and for those knockout covers, month in and month out (especially this last one)!

  4. THIS BOOK WAS AMAZING!!! As a Mockingbird fan, I never expected a regular series, let alone such a brilliant take. This is the most perfect superhero mainstream book I’ve read since Fraction’s Hawkeye, it is pitch perfect in every way. Even if you aren’t into the mainstream books, this title was well written, clever, witty, so overly enjoyable, it was a dream. It was a hard sell though, most people weren’t into the character, where I work I tried to pass her as a counter-terrorism version of Black Widow, no assassination… but still, hard sell. The book was F***ing amazing!!!

    I’m trying to get our store to let me post a large review for the trade. This book was simply stunning. So smart. So fun. I’m avoiding twitter at the moment, but, THANK-YOU CHELSEA THIS WAS SO SATISFYING AND FUN!!!

    Get off your high horse @anonymous and try one of the best books I’ve read this year. It’s tied for first with The Fix, I think. It was amazing.

  5. Hmm….as a long time Mockingbird fan (way back to that George Evans Huntress story and the Ka-Zar appearances) I picked up the first issue and didn’t care for it. But clearly, it wasn’t written for a middle-aged guy like me.
    I do admire the creative team’s spunk, and I dig the cover to this last issue…so I’m going to buy #8 when I swing by Main Street Comics in Middletown in about 30 minutes.

  6. That sucks I loved reading this book why the hell would they cancel it? The art is awesome the stories were worth reading, thats a bummer I do not want this title to die I want for it to go on.

  7. “This has to be one of the dumbest and most internetty comments I’ve ever read!”

    I’ve never seen anyone preface their own comments with such a valid characterization.

    MOCKINGBIRD #7 sold 14,751 issues. In the same month, SCARLET WITCH #10 sold 15,388, DC COMICS BOMBSHELLS #17 sold 16,685 and SPIDER-WOMAN #11 sold 17,743. Heck, INVADER ZIM #13, a comic about a cartoon that was cancelled over a decade ago with only 27 episodes produced, sold 15,358.

    The evidence seems to support the theory that MOCKINGBIRD just wasn’t good enough, not that people don’t like comics about women who kick ass.

    Mike

  8. Mike, I was referring specifically to the concept of commenting on the quality of something without actually reading it. But to your point, I don’t think it’s a good idea to equate sales with quality.

  9. The book I was most excited to pick up every month. Meanwhile lots of mediocre or worse titles keep getting published. Bah.

  10. I suspect the book had a huge hurdle to overcome because it featured Mockingbird. Honestly, I’ve read a lot of bad comics over the years that had Mockingbird in them. And I’ve seen her used as a plot device much more than a character, so I didn’t have any attachment to the character. Add that to a $3.99 price point and my ability to wait 6 months to read it on Marvel Unlimited, and there’s no way in heck I was going to buy this book.

    That said, I ended up borrowing a friend’s copies of the series and I was delightfully surprised with how much I enjoyed the book. Trust me, it’s not lacking for quality. Nor was it some off-putting agenda-ridden book with a chip on its shoulders. It was just a high quality superhero book drowned out in a marketplace full of higher profile attention-getting books. Takes more than quality to sell month-in-month-out.

  11. Uh… is anyone surprised by this, really? It wasn’t that great of a book. The art was somewhat decent, but who really wants to shell out money for a comic that reads like it was written by a Tumblr feminist with a chip on her shoulder?

    I’m not even really opposed to the idea of there being a “feminist comic book”. I figure people can write whatever they want, but Mockingbird was objectively bad. If you’re going to try to drive an agenda or preach through your media, then don’t be so godawful *on the nose about it* all the time. The only people really interested in reading stuff like that is people looking for material to reinforce their own particular world views.

    My advice to Chelsea Cain wouldn’t be to stop writing about what she likes, but instead to next time try to figure out how to get her point across through literary vehicles like allegory and symbolism. She’ll reach a wider audience that way and probably do it in a more meaningful way than having characters mouth what are essentially lines cribbed from the “wit and wisdom” of Twitter and Tumblr.

  12. The writing was terrible. That’s why this comic was cancelled. The author is trying to reframe it as comic fans having an issue with women protagonists because she is too insecure to accept that she was is problem and not everyone else.

  13. Man it was so weird that after eight issues of awesome feminism Cain decided to end the book on “btw Bobbi was never raped, because as a Strong Woman that is impossible, she in fact just cheated on Clint with Phantom Rider.”

  14. I’m gonna buy the trade, since I never got to see the individual books. Would have been nice if they gave people like me a chance to get on board.

  15. If the majority of people who are outraged it was cancelled had bothered to buy the book it wouldn’t have been cancelled.

    Quality is in the wallet of the beholder, Cain wrote a book people weren’t interested in buying and it got cancelled. If her goal was to write a book that could be sustained she failed, if her goal was something else who knows.

  16. I have read this, and a lot of other mockingbird titles, as with most books, some of it was good. The whole Matt Fraction inspiration was very well done,the art was done well too, as you would expect from marvel. However, it did seem to have far too much of an agenda and the writing was bad a fair few times. It was very in your face about the feminist nature of the book, which I really didn’t appreciate. I would’ve had no issues if it wasn’t so obviously blatant. I would say that it was mediocre. which perhaps wouldn’t merit it’s cancellation, however I feel like they needed something more.

  17. Slow build on the comic’s readership — a lot of people only discovered it on issue #6 or #7. Cancelling it with #8 is moronic. They should have waited for the trade to come out at least. It was getting growing readership.

    Marvel and DC simply don’t give comics enough time to “find their legs”. It takes at least a year for word-of-mouth on a good comic to make it into a solid seller, and they keep cancelling them before giving them that much time.

    This does continue my perfect record of finding comics I love only to have Marvel or DC cancel them three issues later.

  18. ULTIMATE IRONY: Mockingbird, nominated for a 2016 Eisner for Best New Series.

    Smooth move, Marvel. Smooth move.

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