Like many people, I was briefly tempted to pitch for Epic. Fortunately, I didn't bother. What a complete waste of time and effort that would have been. Especially if I'd been successful.

Technically, the Epic imprint is still going. The operative word is "technically". Less than a month after Bill Jemas was replaced, his pet project is dead in the water. Not that Marvel will come out and say so, admittedly. But not only is Epic in its death throes, it's descending into total farce at the same time. Is this simply the new management throwing their weight around?

Thus far, only three Epic books have seen the light of day. Mark Millar and Terry Dodson's TROUBLE didn't exactly set the world alight, and seems to have already disappeared off everyone's radar. It certainly wasn't very well reviewed. And with creators who were extremely well established in the industry, it had absolutely nothing to do with the line's supposed purpose of promoting new talent.

Daniel Way and Jon Proctor's miniseries GUN THEORY has only shipped one issue so far. That was back in September. Issue #2 is due out this week. It's actually not at all bad; it would be perfectly at home in DC's Vertigo imprint. But again, it has only a tenuous relationship to the supposed purpose of the line. Way had already been writing books like WOLVERINE and VENOM even before this title came out.

'Less than a month after Jemas was replaced, his pet project is dead in the water.' CRIMSON DYNAMO, by John Jackson Miller and Steve Ellis, was supposed to be the first ongoing Epic series. This one at least had some clearer claim to the "new talent" label - although having said that, Miller was already an industry journalist, Steve Ellis was not a newcomer, and the book didn't come about through the submissions procedure. Still, Miller wasn't an established writer, so at least that box can be ticked.

However, it's only on issue #3 and it's already got one foot in the grave. Issue #3 sees a lurching change of art style halfway through, when Joe Corroney takes over the pencils. It's also plagued by some very confusing storytelling, where the order of the panels doesn't immediately seem to make sense. Meanwhile, Marvel has announced that the book is to go on "hiatus" after issue #6.

That would be "hiatus" in the sense of, "Who do they think they're kidding?" Sales have not exactly been encouraging. The book sells less than RUNAWAYS and HUMAN TORCH, for heaven's sake. I couldn't help raising an eyebrow when Miller commented to Newsarama that, "Discounting TROUBLE, CRIMSON DYNAMO is the best selling Epic book so far." Strictly speaking he's absolutely right, but all that that means is that he outsold GUN THEORY #1. And GUN THEORY #1 debuted as Marvel's third lowest-selling comic in September.

Now, true enough, Epic was designed to be viable at lower sales levels than mainstream Marvel comics. However, if these books are making any money, the profits must surely be marginal. Marvel's management might well be setting out to distance themselves from Jemas' policies for the sake of it, just to make their mark on the company. But they might equally be looking at the figures and asking themselves whether this is really a sensible use of Marvel's resources. How much time and effort has Marvel ploughed into this project, and how much money is the publisher ever likely to see back? It's certainly a valid question.

And judging from the fate of the remaining Epic titles, it would seem to be a question very much on Marvel's mind.

'Why doesn't Marvel just cut its losses and abolish the entire line here and now?' Four Epic titles - PHANTOM JACK, STRANGE MAGIC, SLEEPWALKER and YOUNG ANCIENT ONE - were meant to debut in February 2004. But Marvel has dumped that plan and decided instead that they'll appear as an anthology. And not just any anthology - a quarterly anthology.

Reeks of disaster, doesn't it? Take four titles that only had very marginal prospects of success to begin with (if that), shove them together in a single high-priced volume, and tell the audience that they'll have to wait four months for issue #2. Worse yet, a leaked memo reveals the reason why it's quarterly - because Marvel isn't even going to bother making issue #2 unless issue #1 sells reasonably well, so they've told the creative teams to down tools. With that information in the public domain, it pretty much torpedoes any hope that the book might have had.

It's hard to know quite what to make of this decision. Bluntly, it sounds utterly insane. The chances of success are so remote that you wonder why Marvel doesn't just cut its losses and abolish the entire line here and now. (And quite honestly, now that the audience knows issue #2 will probably never see the light of day, I wouldn't be at all surprised if that happened. Who in their right mind would buy issue #1, aside from the creators' mothers?)

Presumably there are two possibilities. One is that Marvel is setting the line up for dismal failure. But I don't really go in for those sorts of theories - if Marvel disliked the Epic books that much, they could just cancel them anyway. The other, much more likely, theory is that Marvel has written the whole thing off as a disaster, but have decided that it might as well shove out the first issues of these comics, since they've already paid for them and it might conceivably recoup some of the production costs

'Axe Epic and you can use the resources on something more profitable instead.' Again, it wouldn't be hard to come up with a justification for doing so. A SLEEPWALKER revival by Robert Kirkman, for example? If ever there was a minor Marvel character with no built-in fanbase whatsoever, it's Sleepwalker. In fact, I've quite enjoyed some of Robert Kirkman's comics at Image, and I can imagine that the title might have been perfectly entertaining. But Kirkman's Image books don't sell all that well. Is there really an audience for this? It seems like a sure-fire commercial loser.

And as for a comic called YOUNG ANCIENT ONE... well, the mind boggles.

By the way, despite the initial claims that Epic would not involve any editors - which was doubtless part of the original business plan - everyone who's been involved with the imprint has reported heavy levels of editorial involvement. As I pointed out back when Epic was first inviting submissions, this always seemed inevitable. If you're going to recruit new creators without experience then clearly they're going to need support. Judging from the reports of creators involved in Epic books, they received plenty of editorial attention. One wonders how well that fitted into the original budget.

If Marvel has decided that the Epic books have no real prospect of success, then let's be honest - they're probably right. You don't need to be on an anti-Jemas crusade to axe the Epic line, you just need to have a calculator and a budget. Axe Epic and you can use the resources on something more profitable instead. Eminently reasonable.

But is it short term thinking? Not necessarily. Epic's officially stated purposes were to discover new talent and broaden the sort of comics Marvel publish. Perfectly laudable goals in themselves, but it doesn't follow that Epic was the most effective way for Marvel to achieve them. Inviting all the readers to send in pitches is all very nice and cuddly, but boils down to announcing an intention to read the slush pile. It's a very labour intensive way of doing things. Equally, Epic's low-cost approach was supposed to be a way of publishing books in low-selling genres without spending too much money on it; but the point of diversification is surely to reach new audiences, and that involves investment.

For all Epic's apparent good intentions, there have always been very good reasons to doubt the wisdom of the whole thing. If Bill Jemas' successors share those doubts, then they can't really be blamed for axing the project. The PR might leave a little to be desired, but the reasoning is pretty strong.

Paul O'Brien is the author of the weekly X-AXIS comics review.

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