Surprised? Who could be? This still sucks!!!!!!!!! Marvel has done little, other than ask the loyal readers to peddle their wares, to keep this title afloat. When talk first started on the old Alpha Waves group, folks speculated about the team's makeup. I can't remember any of the lists offering up only one core AF member. Invariably they all included Mac, Heather, or both to lead. I can't remember too many lists that didn't include Sasquatch for muscle. Guess they got that one right. There were a lot of Puck fans out there too. Kinda got that. Not! After that there was a lot of division over the twins, Snowbird, Shaman, Talisman, etc. There were arguments to add a couple Vol.2 characters like Flex, Radius, Ghost Girl, but certainly not Murmur. We didn't get any of them. Alienated all of the Vol 2 fans right out the gate. Hell they didn't even get a trip to outerspace. Instead we get all new, all different. Not much there for the die hards (yep I'm one of those, too). So team makeup was definitely a bad start.
Then, let's not market our product at all. Would Coke have won the cola wars or McDonald's the burger wars if they didn't advertise? I think not! They'd be asking "Where's the beef?" Marvel never gave this or any of their fringe relaunches a chance. I've seen readers complain they can't regularly get AF in their town and when they do get to a store it's sold out. Sounds to me like more issues could have been sold if they were available at the comic shops. Even more could have been sold had they offered subscriptions. I get at least 6 magazines at the house every month, but it was impossible to get AF delivered to my doorstep without a heafty shipping and handling charge. And then when I do go to the comic shop I see Spider-man, Avengers, Daredevil, and Fantastic Four comics for $0.25, $0.99, $0.25, and $0.12 respectively. I bet that boosted their sells that month! Probably also got some pick it up and try it readers as well. You'd think this would be a ploy they'd try on a new series, to generate some interest, but instead they use it for some tried and true titles. I picked them all up and guess what....Cap was in the Avengers, Spider-man swung through his pages, and the Fantastic Four had all four originals. How ODD! Follow this up with the fact that I leaf through my daughter's copy of Mary Jane and find a deep discount for subscriptions to X-titles and Spidey titles. Again I'm sure that helped keep their sales numbers up despite the crappy stories. AF could've used this kind of help to get started. Plus once you're signed up for a year, you've already bought those books. Would've taken us all right up to cancellation! Marvel knows they have sold that many copies and can work on increasing the numbers, rather than watching them dwindle away.
I guess it'll be another 5 years before I buy another Marvel comic.
Ben, make sure you let me know when/if they put Alpha back on the stands!
Tom