10 Comics Too Big To Fail (That Did Anyway)
Lesson one when rebooting the Marvel Universe? Maybe don't.
It's easy to look at the world of comic books and find a series or two most people considered too big to fail. After all, there are thousands of comics published every year, and not all of them can go on to make huge amounts of money for the publishers. This includes DC and Marvel Comics.
Even the big guys stop publishing comics intended to run for a thousand issues, and it's often done shortly after they first hit the shelves. Fans drive the marketplace, and if the readers aren't buying books, there's no reason for a publisher to continue publishing them.
Modern comic books have been around, in one form or another, for nearly a century now, and in all that time, there are far more comics that went out of publication than there are that remain in print. Whether it's a series that has broken off from something like The X-Men or another popular title doesn't really matter — if it doesn't sell, or the fans aren't interested, that's it!
Because of this, publishers often approach a new series or story arc in a speculative way. Something they think can't fail because it's associated with popular characters, often does wind up failing. That leaves a lot of titles that were thought to be too big to fail, but that ended up failing anyway...
10. The Unbelievable Gwenpool
The Unbelievable Gwenpool first appeared on a variant cover of Deadpool's Secret Secret Wars, and despite not appearing anywhere in the comic, the character was a huge hit among fans. It wasn't long before she showed up again in a holiday special one-shot as a secondary character to Howard the Duck.
From there, she got her own series, The Unbelievable Gwenpool debuted in June 2016, and the fans loved her. The storylines were original, the character was funny, and the fourth-wall breaks were perfectly written. Sadly, they also foresaw the series' cancellation, as it only ran for a total of 26 issues, ending in April 2018.
The series had a dedicated fan base, so it was a surprising cancellation. While it may have been something the readers weren't expecting, Marvel didn't hesitate to order the series conclusion after less than two years of publication, and the reason is actually pretty simple.
The books may have had a lot of fans, but not enough to justify the expense of publishing the comics. Sales numbers were low, and Marvel axed the book alongside a bunch of others in early 2018. Seeing as the character remains popular among fans, it's likely she will reappear one day, but there's no telling when she'll land a series of her own again.