Les Professionnels 1 Page 1 – Cancelled Comic Books
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.