'danger unlimited'

Does anyone else have "Danger Unlimited?" It's a John Byrne series done for Dark Horse around the same time as John Byrne's Next Men, but it's a series that didn't work out very well.

I got in a collected format. It wasn’t that impressive or interesting, and as a series it probably wouldn’t have lasted long anyway at DC or Marvel. He explains in the back of the colleciton that it failed to get going because of the “John Byrne 40,000” — the readers who automatically will read anything by John Byrne. Comic distributors as a policy start out at an elevated number of copies for the first issue of a new comic, which they reduce incrementally for the next two issues. Since everything is ordered three months ahead of time, it’s not until issue four is going to press that they have a clear idea of what the actual readership will be.

Orders for issue number one came out to 40,000. Issue two was 35,000. Issue three was 30,000. So by that time Byrne’s core readers had discovered that he had a new comic out, but about 10,000 of them couldn’t find it anywhere. If the core group can’t get it, it’s a sure bet the marginal readers won’t be able to find it either, and there’s no way to expand the market.

So he killed it.

Like I said, it had a long set up — I think he wrote it near the end of his marriage, which always takes a toll on a writer and his work — but it had some interesting ideas, particularly with the scene he ended up cutting when it became obvious the series wouldn’t work. (The one guy from the original Danger Unlimited whose memory was being restored turns out to be someone whose memories are being overwritten with a new set so he believes he’s the hero in question. The real man is dead and has been for close to a century.)

Could have been a good comic, but it worked out to pretty much just a side note in Byrne’s career.