Earlier today, news broke that DC Comics has canceled Red Hood, their mature-readers Black Label series, which just debuted yesterday (September 10) in stores. But while the announcement noted that they were cancelling the previously solicited second and third issues as well as “any orders for future issues of the series,” they didn’t specify how many issues that was. And the answer is: a lot.
Specifically, the series written by Gretchen Felker-Martin, with art by Jeff Spokes, and letters by Becca Carey, was planned for at least 12 issues and two collections. DC shared as much back on June 16 when they announced the news of the Red Hood series, stating, “Red Hood Vol. 1, collecting issues 1-6 of this new ongoing DC All In comic book series, will publish on June 16, 2026, and Red Hood Vol. 2, collecting issues 7-12, will publish on December 1, 2026. Future volumes will be announced soon!”
While — as we can plainly see from this example — nothing is certain in the world of comic books, it sure looks like DC Comics was in the Red Hood business for the long haul. Red Hood #2 was originally solicited for October 2, 2025, while Red Hood #3 would have come out in stores on November 12, 2025. Red Hood #6 then would likely have come out in February, followed by a four-month gap until the collection was released, and Red Hood #12 in August, followed by another four-month gap until the second collection in December.
A 12-issue run isn’t out of the ordinary for a Black Label series, but it isn’t par for the course, either. Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Riccardo Federici’s The Last God ran longer than that, and several series by Tom King have run for 12 issues (Rorschach, Danger Street, Strange Adventures, and Batman/Catwoman). James Tynion IV and Álvaro Martínez Bueno’s Nice House by the Lake and Nice House by the Sea are also 12 issues each, though the latter is only partially through its run, and is moving to the Vertigo label.
But that sort of commitment to anything in the main continuity other than, say, Batman or Superman is surprising, and points to how seismic the decision to cancel the title was. It also means that Felker-Martin, Spokes, Carey, and Taurin Clarke, who was planning on joining the title as the regular cover artist with issue #2, are now out about a year of work.
So why was the title canceled? A statement provided to Comic Book Club by DC Comics explained, “At DC Comics, we place the highest value on our creators and community and affirm the right to peaceful, individual expression of personal viewpoints. Posts or public comments that can be viewed as promoting hostility or violence are inconsistent with DC’s standards of conduct.”
We detailed the circumstances at greater length elsewhere, but the short version is that Felker-Martin has been consistently posting about hot-button issues on social media for most of her career. While the timing, and fans and detractors on social media, pointed specifically to her BlueSky posts about the death of right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk yesterday, it seems this cancellation was actually caused by ongoing violations of DC’s social policy.
Given the long run mentioned above, and Felker-Martin’s history of posting, one could wonder where the disconnect happened between DC Comics and the writer… Whatever you think about Felker-Martin’s posts yesterday or before that (her BlueSky account has currently been banned, reportedly for the aforementioned Kirk-related skeets), if DC knew they were in for the long run with her and Red Hood, the fact that she was posting potential violations of the social media policy shouldn’t have been a surprise.
As is, that’s tilting at windmills because Felker-Martin did violate the social media policy, and DC did cancel Red Hood. All 12+ issues and two collections of it.
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