Marvel Comics has cancelled the five issue miniseries by Nick Spencer and Becky Cloonan just a few weeks before the first issue was due to hit the stands. The series, written by Spencer and drawn by Cloonan, was supposed to be a tale of a teenaged Doom as he journeyed into Hell to save the spirit of his mother.
Nick Spencer tweeted this morning after the news broke of the series’ cancellation, “I see word is out about Victor Von Doom. Trust me, no one is more bummed about this than I am. Really proud of the scripts and hope to get to work with @beckycloonan sooner rather than later.”
The cancellation follows a round of layoffs announced by Marvel just last month that included the series’ editor Alejandro Arbona. Other announced cancellations included Alpha Flight (ends at #8), All-Winners Squad (ended at #5), and Iron Man 2.0 (ends at #12; also written by Spencer).
The timing of the announcement was very surprising, the first issue was scheduled to go on sale November 30th and had been solicited for a few months. The current issue of Marvel Previews (November) lists a solicitation for the third issue of a series that no longer will be published.
Was the series cancelled due to the cost cutting measures recently imposed by Isaac Perlmutter? Did Victor Von Doom not meet Marvel’s internal minimum sales projections? Was the current editorial shakeup to blame? Maybe we’ll never know what has caused the book to be pulled, but the only thing that’s certain is that we won’t be seeing this series published anytime soon – if ever. That’s a shame.
– The Comic Book Critic