You may recall that I was singing the virtues of the frankly excellent Humanoids imprint recently – translations for some of the finest of European graphic novels by America’s DC Comics. Alas, new reached the comics community this week that DC is to cease publishing the Humanoids range after the July releases this summer. The range does include some very unusual material, which personally as a graphic novel reader I adore, but I can also see that they may lack ‘mass’ appeal.
DC also announced they will stop publishing the US editions of Rebellion’s 2000 AD titles, again finishing with the July releases. Again, unusual and often challenging material with perhaps not enough mass appeal for the US market for a major publisher. DC has re-affirmed that they have the utmost respect for the quality of the titles from both imprints, but that they simply weren’t working for their publishing imprint.
It’s always the nature of more challenging and unique work in any medium that it will struggle to find the right audience, but given the number of very good smaller, independent publishers perhaps someone will step in who is better suited to these imprints, although the need to translate Humanoids titles could be a big stumbling block. Fingers crossed both find new partners and although it is sad to see DC dropping the imprints they still deserve some kudos for being adventurous enough to give them a chance in the first place.
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