Submitted by Chachi, Feb 24, 2008 01:01

"'Amazons Attack,' a miniseries commissioned to fill a hole in the book's publishing schedule caused by Mr. Heinberg's delays, was reviled by fans who decried it as an abomination."

Actually, that's only partially correct. It was originally intended to be part of the Countdown to Infinite Crisis, like Rann Thanagar, Day of Vengeance, OMAC, and Villains United.

The title was scrapped and then reintroduced in an almost stop-gap fashion because of the mess that was Heinberg and Pocoult. The problem with the article you linked to is that the author doesn't cite a reference for his statement of why it was introduced.

1) Heinberg was only slated for a 5 issue run. Amazons Attack! happened after issue #4 had come out and they had already announced he'd be finishing up in an Annual.

2) Pocoult was also slated for a 5 issue run and Amazons Attack! was incorporated into the last few of her on-time, though badly written issues.

It doesn't make sense that knowing Jodi was going to be on for 5 issues, they created the story SOLELY for the reason of filling space between Heinberg's #4 and Wonder Woman Annual #1, as they had other writers writing fill-in issues (one even between Heinberg's #4 and Jodi's #6) and continued to have fill-in issues until Gail came on. (the Annual shipped in September of 2007 and sold a little over 40k; AA wrapped up with two books in August 2007, selling 40k and 39k, as well as Wonder Woman #12 which sold 50k and was followed by a fill-in issue)

It seems more likely that AA was rushed to stop the bleeding of readers caused by BOTH main writers in the beginning as a way to try and spice up the title, as the delays caused by Heinberg and the atrocious writing by Pocoult likely forced their hand to try something stop-gap.

But for all the negative reviews of AA, it still sold over 40k an issue with the exception of #6, which was just under that.

For all of the hooplah around Gail Simone coming on, the sales were:

WW #14 - 53,090
WW #15 - 44,628
WW #16 - 45,168

While quantity doesn't equal quality by any means, the article almost makes it seem as if Simone will bring the book to this high status. While the writing is better, and Gail will likely bring stability to the book, which may indeed increase readership, her much heralded arrival on the book was immediately followed by a sharp drop-off, just like the other authors.

The book will likely level out around 40k, almost regardless of who writes it unless it's one of those top-seller names that people jump all over for whatever reasons!

And I can't express enough, the sales numbers are only here to show they aren't much different from what they were. The article had, to me, seemed to suggest that the sales on AA were so horrible and Simone would be a savior of sorts, the implication being that the book would sell much more, but the fact is that both AA and the current run have moved around the same number on average per month.

I am implying nothing on quantity being equal to quality!

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