When Will C-List Books Come Back?

Hawkeye #2 (Marvel Comics, via IGN)

With the recent announcement of a new Hawkeye series, by the Immortal Iron Fist team of Matt Fraction and David Aja, it has become painfully obvious....when will C-lister books come back to Marvel.  C-listers are books that focus on character or teams that aren't as well known as your A or B listers.  Hawkeye, I'd say is a B-lister.  Many C-listers are fan favorites though, and have had fans clamoring for years for new ongoings.  Gambit, who seems to be getting a new ongoing in August, is one of them.  But why won't Marvel take chances like fans have been hoping?

Gambit teaser (Marvel Comics)

The main reason is the market.  People aren't buying as many comics as they were, and Marvel learned that the hard way.  Many miniseries and ongoings were cancelled near the end of 2011.  The easiest way for these books to make a resurgence would be for the market to turn around.  Books like Herc and X-23 would have been around much longer if the market wasn't in such a rough place.  Even when a C-lister book has a great creative team, like the most recent volume of Moon Knight, that's no guarantee that it will be around for long.  When putting Brian Michael Bendis' and Alex Maleev's name on a book won't help it sell, then it's almost hopeless.

It seems like the only way for C-lister books to stay around longer than 10 issues in this market is to bring them into spotlight first.  A great example of this is the new Captain Marvel book that is coming out in July.  It seems that, in the pages of Secret Avengers, she will get the mantle.  Doing this will make Carol Danvers a bigger part of the Marvel universe, thus making her book one of the "must reads" of Marvel.  Nova seems to be getting a new series eventually, due to his new inclusion in Avengers vs X-Men.  The thing that puzzles me is the new Gambit series.  Unless he has a big part in Avengers vs X-Men, it seems it will have the problem of the most recent volume of Moon Knight.  Now, we don't know the creative team attached to this book, but it seems to be in the same predicament.  

The one strategy that doesn't seem to work anymore is launching a book during an event.  During Fear Itself, Herc, Alpha Flight, and Ghost Rider were all launched during the Serpent's War.  And what happened to them?  Herc was cancelled after 10 issues, Ghost Rider after nine, and Alpha Flight was upgraded to an ongoing and then immediately demoted to a miniseries.  Books need to have a good footing before they are launched.  Herc, who was in Fear Itself in #3, then went into Spider-Island immediately after Fear Itself.  The book never had an identity of it's own.  And by the time it started to find it's footing, Marvel cancelled it.  

With many rumors of Marvel starting a new volume of Guardians of the Galaxy and Nova, one can only hope that this will be the start of a great resurgence of C-lister books.  I'll have my fingers crossed for a new Iron Fist book.