10 Best Comics Cancelled Before Their Time

You know how amazing television series like Firefly get cancelled way ahead of their time? Unfortunately, the same can happen to comic books, and the reasons for those cancellations are often the same. TV shows lose viewers, which end up losing advertising dollars so a show is dropped, and comics lose sales, which reduces orders and leads to their cancellation.

Both platforms have the same problem when it comes to a really great product: if nobody is watching/reading it, it doesn't matter how good it is, no company is going to continue producing it. Because of this, there have been tons of great comic book titles that were canceled before their time.

It's never due to the artwork not being up to snuff, and it's never about the writing, which is usually amazing; it's all due to poor sales.

This can happen because of a myriad of reasons, not least because Marvel and DC have proven ineffective at publishing their books over the years, but also because of a general lack of interest.

Some of the best series to get the early axe have familiar characters, which is why some of these might surprise you. For whatever reason, these are the best comics that ended up getting canceled by their publishers before they had a chance to garner a considerable audience.

Chase was a series launched in 1998 by Dan Curtis Johnson with pencils provided by J. H. Williams III. The series revolved around Cameron Chase, an agent of the Department of Extranormal Operations, which was tasked with monitoring superhuman threats to national security in the United States.

Basically, it was a cross between the X-Files, the Department of Paranormal Activity, and S.H.I.E.L.D. all rolled up in one. Chase was an agent who had a considerable distrust of superhumans seeing as her father was one, but was killed while she was still a young girl.

The series was well-written and beautifully illustrated, but one of the key features was that it centered around a female lead, with the character of Cameron Chase being well structured and fascinating.

Ultimately, the series failed to find an audience. Only nine issues of the main run were published with a 10th issue tying into the DC One Million storyline. That issue won the Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Award for Favorite Story back in 1999, which just goes to show how well-written Chase was.

The series has since been collected in a graphic novel, and Cameron Chase has appeared in other media including issues within The New 52, DC Rebirth, Smallville Season 11, and the television series Supergirl.