Goodbye ‘Angela: Queen Of Hel’ And ‘Howling Commandos of SHIELD’, As Marvel Continues To Stealth-Cancel Titles

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed while scanning the Marvel solicitations for April, May and June that certain All-New, All-Different Marvel titles are missing without any word from Marvel about it. Well, it seems that Marvel’s new plan for cancelled comics is to end them without an announcement, or even a FINAL ISSUE tagged onto a solicit, as today there were two confirmations of cancellations within the comics themselves.

The first came from Frank J. Barbiere and Brent Schoonover in what would be the letters page for their comic, Howling Commandos of SHIELD, in which they take the time to thank the readers and the editorial team for the opportunity to tell their story. The second came from within the story itself in Angela: Queen of Hel #6 by Marguerite Bennett and Kim Jacinto, as Angela’s girlfriend Sera breaks the fourth-wall and refers to the book as their “penultimate issue”.

These two cancellations follow the news of Black Knight’s demise with #4, although that was only confirmed by its writer, Frank Tieri on Facebook. Fans started to become suspicious when more and more ANAD titles disappeared from solicitations, but it does seem that Marvel is now in the practice of letting comics run their course without comment.

Also missing from future solicitations are Hercules, Red Wolf, Weirdworld, and Illuminati, although Hercules’ story carries on in the miniseries Civil War II: Gods of War. Earlier this month, we wrote about the DC Implosion of the '70s, and lessons that could be learned from it, and perhaps the lesson Marvel learned is that if you don’t make a fuss, maybe people won’t notice the wave of cancellations and give it a catchy nickname.

Would 'the Marvel Whimper' be a catchy nickname?