DC Comics Cancels Six Titles, Announces Super-Occupy Wall Street Comics

Yesterday, in the second installment of their new monthly column over on CBR, DC Comics Editor-in-Chief Bob Harras and Editorial Director Bobbie Chase made a few announcements, but the biggest revelation was that DC Comics is canceling six books: Fury of Firestorm, Ravagers, Savage Hawkman, Deathstroke, Sword Of Sorcery and Team 7. Put in perspective, that is nearly 12 percent of its monthly titles.

Following that, today DC announced two new upcoming books: The Movement, from writer Gail Simone, and The Green Team, from writers Art Baltazar and Franco, each of which the publisher says will be "tackling themes surrounding Occupy Wall Street."The Movement, drawn by Freddie Williams II, is "an idea I've had for quite some time," Simone told the Huffington Post:

"It's a book about power -- who owns it, who uses it, who suffers from its abuse. As we increasingly move to an age where information is currency, you get these situations where a single viral video can cost a previously unassailable corporation billions, or can upset the power balance of entire governments. And because the sources of that information are so dispersed and nameless, it's nearly impossible to shut it all down."

DC Comics is billing this as the "1% plus the 99%," with Simone's title reflecting the latter. On the other side of the discussion lies the The Green Team. Written by Baltazar and Franco and with art by Ig Guara, Baltazar had this to share about the series:

"If you had unlimited wealth, could you use that to make the lives of people better? Would you help your fellow man? Would you buy powers? You need to read this and find out."

Assigning Baltazar and Franco to a title focusing on economic inequality is a somewhat surprising move by DC, as the two Eisner Award winners -- whose Aw Yeah Comics Kickstarter has nearly doubled its goal in less than four day -- are primarily known for their work on kid friendly books such as Tiny Titans and the recently canceled Superman Family Adventures, the latter of which was one of our picks for the best comics of 2012. It will be interesting to see how they approach the topic.

As for the six canceled books, three of them have been around since the September 2011 launch of the publisher's New 52 initiative, meaning 20 of the original 52 titles have now been canceled. The other three -- Sword of Sorcery, Team 7 and Ravagers -- are each ending after just seven issues.

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