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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shadow" data-source="post: 5317174" data-attributes="member: 16760">If Shadow-Force Were A Comic...[So on a slow day I had a few thoughts about Shadow-Force from the point of view of the comics industry - what would have driven the direction of the campaign from a comic company's point of view?  I wrote the following and sent it to SP, thinking it likely to amuse him.  I was right!  Perhaps it will amuse you too.  I see the company in question as a smallish one that has somehow managed to acquire title to some Golden Age properties.]I think originally there was an Erebus book which was fairly popular.  (He's basically a magical-darkness version of Wolverine, after all.)When they started heating up the P.S.I. arc, they introduced the Phantom to team up with.  Probably they were wanting to see how this went over with the fans;  the Phantom could've ended up as a one-shot (though popping up later in other contexts, of course), as a sidekick of sorts - or, if he proved popular, he could even get his own book.The P.S.I. arc proved wildly popular.  So much so that the editors wanted to keep Erebus and the Phantom together, and started floating the idea of a team.  They introduced a supporting character, a minor second-tier guy Technoid that they hadn't done much with in a while, to see how that went over.  It did fine, though Technoid was never as popular as the other two.So they started a new "Shadow-Force" title.  Brimstone and X-97 were created from scratch;  Bazooka had probably been, like Technoid, an established minor character they'd never done much with.  I don't know if the Erebus solo book continued;  probably not.Mystra and Chameleon were introduced by different writers as allies, but not every writing team felt inclined to use them, so they languished a bit.  Meanwhile, Shadow-Force was tied in with the Freedom Squad, an old Golden and Silver Age team that still saw some use, but which hadn't carried its own book in a while.The "shocking conclusion" to Forestrike's criminal career received critical acclaim;  the team had finally 'arrived' as a cemented feature of the setting.  (And likewise, the Phantom firmly established as a major A-list hero and leader of the team.)  So the editors started thinking of ways they could capitalize on this."Shadow-Force" started getting a backup feature called "The B Team" or something like that - lighter stories about trainee superheroes.  Sometimes the reservists popped up in the main plot of the book too, just to spice things up.  One of them, Photon, proved surprisingly popular.  Although he'd started out basically as comic relief, his innocent, sincere goofiness won people over."The B Team" faded out after a while, but Photon got his own limited miniseries, just to see how it would do.  They tried taking him in a bit more serious direction, while keeping him idealistic and awkward.  The arc against the Covenant did quite well.  Meanwhile the main "Shadow-Force" book continued to do well, and fans started to clamor for Photon to take on a bigger role;  so he joined the team as its most junior member.At this point the writers started pushing things to the next level.  To the glee of the 'shippers, Bazooka and Brimstone got engaged.  And they started introducing new cosmic-level villains:  Red Dragon, Diabolus, and most of all the Doctor.In that last arc, they decided to go 'dark'.  They built things up heavily - 'Who will live and who will die?', that kind of thing - and then actually killed off the Freedom Squad (which by that point were basically also-rans for Shadow-Force anyway).  It sold a lot of comics, even hit the mainstream news - "American Eagle" had been a popular Golden Age book, after all.The dimension-travelling arc going after the Doctor caught the fans' attention as seriously cool.  Meanwhile people wanted to know what was going on with Photon in the team's absence.  The writers started doing minor arcs with Photon and Beta trying to cope, and these were well-received.At this point the editors decided to roll the dice and try something new.  The major driving dynamic of Shadow-Force had always been the relationship between the Phantom and Erebus;  a new writing team had quite a bit of nostalgia for the early days of the P.S.I. arc.So they gave the Phantom and Erebus their own duo book to have weird dimensional adventures in and in the process gave Photon a "radiation accident" so he could start stepping up as more of an equal with the others.  But sales for "Shadow-Force" started to slip without the two main characters... The stories were lackluster and the book came perilously close to cancellation.Until somebody had the brilliant idea of taking things a step further.  Photon got his own limited series again, "Life & Light" in which Bazooka and Brimstone also left the team.  (Perhaps got their own miniseries as well.)These had been intended to be temporary changes to revitalize the title, but "Life & Light" *took off*.  The fans loved it!  (Even when the series culminated in another 'shocking conclusion', with the lackluster hero Technoid being turned into a villain and defeated by Photon.)  The editors weren't quite sure where to take things from there, though, except they wanted more."Life & Light" had focussed on the trials and tribulations of Photon trying to hold the city together more or less alone;  it gave the writers an excuse to do teamups with some less-used characters, like the Protectors and the Texas Legends.  But what had really captured the fan's attention was Photon being forced to mature, to lead.  You couldn't keep that up forever with temporary teamups.After some dithering about what to do, it was decided to recreate Shadow-Force almost from the ground up, a little 'edgier' this time.  *And* reviving American Eagle (the oldest and most popular Freedom Squad hero) with a fresh new look, while hinting that Black Phantom (the second most) was not far behind.  I'm sure Hardhat fans are sending in letters. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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