Nothing’s worse than having a favorite comic get canceled. Every story eventually wraps up, as the creative team runs out of things to say about a character or simply wants to work on something else and can’t balance doing everything at once. But that’s not the same as a story getting completely canceled.
Read comics long enough, and every fan will deal with this at least once. Sometimes it’s because the sales on a book weren’t good enough, sometimes the editors straight-up don’t like a book even if it does sell. There’s no shortage of reasons a book might get canceled, and some of DC’s best books have had to deal with this exact issue.
10 Justice League International: Generation Lost. before anyone could do anything with that storyline, DC started its New 52, retconning everything that had happened to make this story possible.
Justice League Generation Lost was one of the best storylines to spin out of the Brightest Day event. It was a bi-weekly comic that collected all the members of the JLI and forced them to deal with a revived Maxwell Lord, who had used his powers to erase his existence from everyone’s mind except theirs.
The story ends with Captain Atom convincing him to undo that mind-wipe, but it doesn’t matter: he’s already come up with a convenient excuse to make everyone forgive what he’s done. Batman decides his plan to fight back is to form a new Justice League International, but before anyone can do anything with that storyline, DC starts its New 52, retconning everything that had happened to make this story possible.
9 Tim Drake Almost Became Blue Beetle. DC refused to give Chuck Dixon a chance at this, likely because they wanted Tim Drake to remain in the Robin role.
More of a look at what could have been, in the early 2000’s Chuck Dixon was trying to bring back Ted Kord and make him more relevant. Part of that storyline was eventually going to be Tim Drake working with Ted Kord, and giving up the role of Robin to become Blue Beetle temporarily before going back to being Robin later on.
This was going to happen in the lead-up to Dixon’s 100th issue on Robin, but DC refused to give Dixon a chance at this, likely because they wanted Tim Drake to remain in the Robin role.
8 Red Circle Heroes. DC decided instead that it’d be better to use these issues on Milestone characters.
Originally belonging to Archie Comics, DC had the rights to publish Red Circle characters for a time. These were heroes like The Shield, the Wizard, The Comet, The Web, and more. Originally these characters were going to be fit into the DC Universe, and writer J. Michael Straczynski was going to be responsible for integrating them via crossovers in the Brave and the Bold ongoing.
The only problem was DC decided instead that it’d be better to use those issues on Milestone characters, and left JMS to do one-shots that would eventually become short-lived ongoings instead.
7 The Great Ten Never Finished Its Mini-Series. their book was canceled due to low sales even though there was only one issue left.
The Great Ten were a team of superheroes based out of China that premiered in the weekly comic 52. The team would appear in other comics largely in guest roles over the next three to four years, popping up in comics like Checkmate and Outsiders, but never for longer than a few issues.
But in 2009 they got their own ten-issue mini-series that developed the origin stories of all of their members and would have gone on to battle against a robot army in the tenth issue... but their book was canceled due to low sales even though there was only one issue left.
6 Dwayne McDuffie's Justice League. the writer wasn’t allowed to have control over his own book & Eventually, DC let the writer go.
Dwayne McDuffie’s entire Justice League run was truncated. The legendary writer had gone through multiple stories but each one had to be seriously altered because of what the DC editorial team wanted to be done in the background.
The writer had given some rather frank answers on his message board about what was happening to his stories and how he wasn’t allowed to have control over his own book. Eventually, DC let the writer go because of his honesty.
5 Rick Veitch on Swamp Thing. Rick Veitch had a storyline about Swamp Thing going back in time to meet Jesus, which was canceled because DC was concerned about the potential backlash.
Swamp Thing had been a major title for DC in the '80s—alongside a handful of other books, it was the precursor to the Vertigo line that made DC such an attractive company for creator-owned work.
But while Rick Veitch was working on the comic, he had a storyline about Swamp Thing going back in time to meet Jesus, which was canceled because DC was concerned about the potential backlash. This caused them more problems when Neil Gaiman and Jamie Delano also pulled out of following up on Veitch’s run out of solidarity.
4 Peter David on Supergirl. DC decided to cancel the comic & push Linda Danvers to the side to bring back Kara Zor-El on her own.
In the ’90s, Peter David managed to make a critically successful run out of Supergirl despite her no longer being a Kryptonian. This version of the character was a merger of a human known as Linda Danvers and a shape-shifting protoplasm known as Matrix.
The writer planned to go on past the book’s initial cancellation by creating a Superman version of Birds of Prey, where Linda would work alongside Power Girl and Kara Zor-El. Instead, DC decided to cancel the comic and push Linda Danvers to the side to bring back Kara Zor-El on her own.
3 Justice Society of America In the '90s. the editor at the time didn’t think DC should be making comics about older heroes.
In the early ’90s, the Justice Society got to make a return in a mini-series which was well-received enough that it got a monthly series the following year. The book was written by Len Strazewski and drawn by Mike Parobeck, and followed the team’s adventures after escaping a literal never-ending battle when they were trapped in a version of Ragnarok.
The book was meant to run for twelve issues but was canceled ten issues in. As it turns out, this had nothing to do with sales or critical acclaim, but rather because the editor at the time didn’t think DC should be making comics about older heroes.
2 Wonder Woman's Mother Was Nearly Married. Gail Simone left the book and didn’t want to saddle JMS with her own storylines.
This was less about a storyline being canceled and more about the stars simply not aligning. In a blog post on her Tumblr, Gail Simone talked about wanting to do a story where Wonder Woman’s mother Hippolyta would have gotten married to her long-time partner Philippus.
This storyline wasn’t able to come to fruition because she left the book and didn’t want to saddle JMS with her own storylines, particularly when he wanted to soft-reboot the character.
1 Emerald Twilight. The editors at DC didn’t care for this story at all.
Before Emerald Twilight was the story fans have now, there was originally a completely different version of the book. The storyline was meant to be much tamer, as the Zamarons came back to the Guardians and took the Green Lantern Corps from them. This would lead to them getting rid of the only weakness the Lantern rings have and making Sinestro a Green Lantern again, while Hal went rogue out of a refusal to work with Sinestro or the Zamarons.
The editors at DC didn’t care for this story at all, and instead chose to have Ron Marz do the story everyone knows today, where Hal still goes rogue, but on a much larger scale, and Sinestro fights for the Guardians as the last person able to actually stop Hal Jordan.