The story is all the way down in the "Briefly" section. Essentially it just says "Manhunter cancelled with issue #38 (which is January's issue). Which is sad, yes, as the book will not have lasted a year since its return. I always get kind of aggravated that these stories only merit blips on the radar at times, and then I find myself picking up the last issue that contains a note at the end from the artist and writer "Thanks for the run guys!" and a big fat "THE END" at the bottom of the page. Or if we're lucky, a "Check out the adventures of [character] in [this other book where they'll be a minor character] monthly!"
It seems to me that there may be reasons as to why they are poor sales (besides the piss-poor marketing that DC does on their lower tier books). First of all, looking at the August sales (I'm not looking at all the sales charts, cause it's morning, and dammit, I just got up), Manhunter ranks 153 on the top 300. Below it are two other DC comics, Blue Beetle and The Spirit. Now, Manhunter took a significant sales drop by comparison to the two (over a thousand!), which is probably why Blue Beetle is still floating around, and The Spirit I imagine is hanging on due to the upcoming Frank Miller movie.
Why the sudden drop in interest? First of all, we had a huge gap between when we were told Manhunter was coming back and when it actually did. Roughly a year between the announcement it was coming back and when issue 31 actually did drop. Which is fair, Marc Andreyko had to come up with some new material and weave in where the subplots that were still running fit into that. Now, for most part the art has either been handled by Jesus Saiz or Javier Pina, both contributing fantastic art. But on this return of Manhunter, we are surprised with Michael Gaydos. Now, I like Gaydos' art, but after so many issues of him drawing Manhunter, I'm pretty sure the art doesn't fit so well into Kate Spencer's world. And no doubt some pickier readers may have gone as far as to pick the book up, looked at the art, put it back down, and walked away. These are probably the folks that pick up books cause Greg Land did the cover, but still.
Additionally, I can't say I was terribly impressed with Andreyko's writing this go-round. While the story was mostly fine, the dialogue seemed a bit lacking. It's possible this contributed as well. I have trouble even imagine how the book could suffer a thousand reader drop in sales so amazingly quick, other than a late-in-the-month release date. At the very least folks, you'll be able to see Manhunter in Birds of Prey, as the quite capable Tony Bedard seems intent to include her.
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