It’s official. Peter David’s Fallen Angel is moving to IDW and will return in December! The first story arc will apparently feature Lee’s own origin (we learned Bete Noir’s and Juris’ origins in “Hurlyburly”), and—surprisingly—Sachs and Violens will be recurring characters.
The new artist isn’t signed yet, but J.K. Woodward is being rumored.
Fallen Angel is ending with #20, and Babylon 5: The Memory of Shadows has fallen through.
However, JMS has always said, “If they can do a Brady Bunch movie, you can be sure that sooner or later, somebody’s going to do a B5 movie.” Even better, it turns out that while Warner Bros. owns the B5 TV show lock, stock and barrel, JMS owns the movie rights…so he’s in a position to make sure that whoever does do a B5 movie will get it right. “To that end,” he says… “I can wait.”
As for Fallen Angel, I suspect the timing of the decision means DC either wasn’t waiting for sales after all, or was going on pre-orders from stores. Peter David cryptically remarks, “We are not, however, quite dead yet.” It’s not clear what he means, but the characters are creator-owned, and the series isn’t tied to the DC Universe, so it’s entirely possible for them to pop up again at another publisher. Only time will tell.
![[Cover]](https://hyperborea.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2005/02/fallenangel19c.jpg)
In the first week of March, Peter David’s series Fallen Angel returns from hiatus with issue #19, the first part of a 2-part crossover with Sachs and Violens, a classic pair of Peter David/George Perez characters.
Fallen Angel follows the enigmatic title character through the city of Bete Noire, Louisiana. Lee—known to some as the Fallen Angel—protects the city at night, but the city isn’t sure it wants her there. Duality and moral ambiguity are the series’ central themes, as it becomes clear that you can’t always map protagonist to heroine or antagonist to villain. Intrigue and action with a twist of film noir.
So far, DC hasn’t ordered anything beyond #20, but no one can confirm whether the series has officially been cancelled. Word is that if the next two issues sell well enough, the series could continue. If not, it’s toast.
We’re down to the wire. If you’re curious, pick up the Fallen Angel TPB (collecting issues #1–6). See if you can find—or borrow—the later issues. And if you’re interested at all in seeing the series continue, pick up or pre-order Fallen Angel #19–20.
The current tenuous situation with Fallen Angel reminds me of one of those curiosities of the comic book market: the relationship between episodes in magazine form and longer stories in book form.
Most comics in the US/Canadian market are released as individual issues, with maybe 22 pages of story and a bunch of ads. Longer works are often released as trade paperbacks (TPBs), but often don’t sell as well because, let’s face it, $19.95 is a much bigger chunk of change than $2.50. However, many series are collected into TPBs once the publisher figures the original issues have mostly been tapped out, often adding additional material like sketches, character designs, or occasionally an entire epilogue. (Kingdom Come and Death: The High Cost of Living both used that trick.) Advantages: they fit on a shelf, they’re often better paper and more durable, you can get an entire 6-part story in one chunk… and most importantly, they can fit on bookstores’ shelves, bringing them to an entirely new audience.
During the 1990s, only the most popular storylines would get the TPB treatment, but as the graphic novel market has grown, the trend has been toward collecting every issue of a series, so that whether you get the original issues or the collections, you still get everything. This has led to two controversial phenomena: writing for the trade and waiting for the trade. Continue reading
Peter David’s excellent Fallen Angel comic, previously doomed by excellent critical reviews (and low sales) to an untimely death at #18, has achieved the impossible: a two-issue reprieve!
The series will skip a month after the conclusion of the current storyline in #18, and Issues #19-20 will pick up in February and March. These will feature a self-contained two-part story in which the enigmatic Angel meets a pair of classic Peter David/George Perez characters: Sachs and Violens. (And yes, that is a George Perez cover you’re looking at.) Newsarama has the details.
If these issues do well enough, it just might be enough to get Fallen Angel off the chopping block. If not… well, 20 issues is a good run in today’s market, where series are canceled after less than a year.
The present storyline, “Hurlyburly,” began in issue #15 and runs through #18 (out next month). It promises to finally reveal the origins of the title character and the city of Bete Noir. There’s a TPB of issues #1-6. No word yet on a second collection, though increased sales on the first, and on the current issues, should make it more likely.
