Marvel has dropped the ax on Young Allies, going so far as to cancel the solicitation for December's Issue 7.

The series, by Sean McKeever and David Baldeon, launched in June under the publisher's "Heroic Age" banner, and starred Nomad, Firestar, Araña, Gravity and a new Toro. "The idea behind Young Allies is that it's literally a group of young allies," McKeever told Comic Book Resources in March. "It's not so much a team in the conventional sense as it is a group of like-minded people of the same generation."

Young Allies got off to a rough start, with the first issue selling less than 21,000 copies -- teetering on Marvel's traditional "line of death." By the third issue, that figure had dropped to 14,000.

McKeever, who's carved out a niche with teen-superhero dramas like Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane and the Nomad backup story in Captain America, confirmed the cancellation, writing on Twitter that Young Allies #7 "was only at the plotting stages when the hammer came down, so there is no 'missing issue'." (Marvel told Comics Alliance the series is "on hiatus.")

McKeever will continue to write the Nomad serial in Captain America. His next big Marvel project, Onslaught Unleashed, was announced over the weekend at New York Comic Con.

"More discussion of Young Allies in the last 24 hours than there had been since its announcement in March," McKeever tweeted this morning. "Le sigh."

The sixth and final issue of Young Allies arrives in stores on Nov. 3.