City of Heroes Comic To End
The MMORPG-based comic City of Heroes - just about the only other comic I actually have a mailing subscription to - is set to end in about a month or so (figures).
City of Heroes has already eclisped two runs from two different publishers. The first, by Blue King Studios, focused on on minor heroes Apex, War Witch and Horus, in their efforts against the various supervillain groups of Paragon City. This one got off to a rocky start, and though its character were superb by the end, cheesy dialogue in the start as well poorly-picked side characters were the death of this series. To make matters worse, the Blue King run completely ignored to the heroes at the heart of COH - like the ones on the box!
The second series, by Top Cow, corrected this problem by recruiting serious comic book muscle like Mark Waid, Dan Jurgens and Troy Hickman while injecting a focus on the premiere superteam, the Freedom Phalanx as well as the Teen Titan-esque Vindicators. While heads and tails above the Blue King Studios run, the Top Cow series still had problems - namely focusing too much on its NPC heroes and not enough on player-created heroes.
First off, I wouldn’t argue with the cancelling of the comic - it was prone to delays, and since it was Top Cow, I have a feeling if it wasn’t selling it was burning a hole in NCSoft’s pocket. However, I do think there should be something comic-related out there to entice the regular audience.
The comics have included strips from the likes of Ctrl Alt Del’s Tim Buckley as well as others in the past, and this practice should continue on the website. In addition, I recommend (warning: vagrant self-promotion approaching!) a humor action-driven webcomic picking off where the comic left off, done in the style of say, my own webcomic Hector! (**cough** my schedule is open **cough**)
While I’ll be sorry to see the City of Heroes comic go - nothing made me want to play more, even when my account is inactive - I do think there are plenty of interesting options awaiting the folks at NCSoft. I can’t wait to see what they do next.
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