“Legion” Is A Strong Word: DC Cancels Four Titles While DeMatteis / Maguire Tease New One

DC’s August solicitations are starting to be released and, as one will when a comic pubisher spends most of 2011 extolling their new group of 52 comics, I perused them to see which of those 52 new and exciting books are getting the ick.

And the short answer is: four of them, with two coming from the original New 52 from September, 2001. Those books being Dial H, Threshold, Demon Knights and Legion of Super Heroes, with the latter two being two of those original relaunched titles.

I have long since stopped keeping count of how many of the original New 52 titles are still sucking breath (although it’s clearly more than ten percent… because at least seven of them are Batman Family titles that will only be cancelled if some dingbat hires Joel Schumacher to reboot the Batman movie series. And by “reboot,” I obviously mean “add nipples to Batman’s boots”), but none of these cancellations are particularly a surprise to me. Dial H was clearly a Vertigo title marooned in the DC Universe; a book initially edited by former Vertigo chief Karen Berger, and given the upheaval in DC’s Editorial division, this book probably only had a matter of time unless someone changed the title to Dial B. With Gotham City’s Area Code Before The “B.” And Then Dial “Atman.”