Pretty much every comic book title I read gets cancelled.  Just when I really get into a series, some editor somewhere finds out it’s on my subscription list, and decides it’s not worth publishing any more.  Sometimes it’s because I “sub” to really obscure titles by publishers with bad business plans (like presenting all of their content for free, and not selling any ads).  Sometimes it’s because I like high concept titles which tend to have a hard time finding their audience.  The one thing it seems they all have in common, though, is my patronage.

Three weeks ago I decided to add Les Professionnels to the publishing schedule.  Appearing with this post is the first page of their first story “One for the Monet.”  This story was a crafted from script I wrote, with art made up of screen shots taken in the MMORPG “City of Heroes” and its companion expansion “City of Villains.”  It was our entry into a comic creating contest held by the game’s publisher “NC Soft” a few years ago.

NC Soft announced this week that they have decided to cease development and operations of servers supporting City of Heroes/Villains.  So, I posted my comic made from their game, and they cancelled their game.  For most people this isn’t even a blip in the “who cares?” bucket.  The game hasn’t had “sustainable” server populations for a while.  I liked it because it was the sort of game I could jump on and play for thirty minutes or three hours and not feel like I was getting left behind.  Of course I did have two “epic” level characters, and two more who were close to it.

The thing that does irk me is, with premiering The Pro’s, I actually was thinking about doing some follow on stories.  I may still, the concept is still good-ish.  Just now, I’ll have to actually draw the characters.  As you see from their format, that means that first, I’ll have to learn how to draw.