Street Poet Ray: A Declared Chronicle of Cancellation.
Origins of Street Poet Ray Collection
When you decide to add a new comic to your monthly shopping list, you can take the best sellers in the United States as a reference. But have you ever wondered why they are so unsuccessful? In the specific case of Marvel, superhero titles have more or less large followings, but on the opposite side, this place is without a doubt Street Fighter Rey (1990). Keep reading this article to know how it came about and the reasons behind its cancellation.
Even if you were a veteran reader who collected La Casa de las comics at the time, if you don’t remember seeing that comic on the shelves, it’s not that you have a bad memory, but rather that it was never published in Spain. Created by poets Michael Redmond and Junko Hosizawa, Street Fighter Rey has become a Marvel staple, although he previously appeared in the independent Blackhorn, attracting potential readers as a new trend, or at least that’s what one executive from The House believes. of ideas. Below, you can see the cover of the first issue in detail, which gives us an idea of what will be inside.
What did Marvel think of Street Fighter Ray?
Of course, since everyone believed that Street Fighter Rey could be an absolute disaster, it seemed more of an amateur project than the usual titles offered by Marvel. To confirm this statement, if anyone is interested after seeing the cover, take a look at some of the comic’s inner pages. As you can see, the simplicity of the pictures, in black and white, is not very attractive to the reader who is used to a more sophisticated composition and a more interesting script.
Street Fighter Ray’s early cancellation
Street poet Ray was dubbed “Haiku Rap”, because short poems from Japan that deal with subjects related to nature or everyday life are called haikus. The little confidence that the publisher had in the masthead was so evident that from the beginning it was decided to settle on six issues that appeared every two months, although in the end, only four saw the light of day with world adventures. From Road, Earth Day 1990, Homeless Hearts and Last Rays of Summer.
Unfortunately, as we mentioned earlier, even the fact that it appeared in the market in the nineties, which was a good time for most Marvel products, did not help to save the title.
The main problem with Street Fighter Rey was its philosophical content, which didn’t find its place among the superhero titles that were so appealing to Marvel readers. However, the MTV network itself was responsible for promoting it, so everything was done to get people to give it a chance. But everything was in vain.
Parodiando street poet Rey
Ray, a street poet, became the center of many jokes in the company. Of course, the easiest way to do this would have been to turn to the publisher’s short story and use his name to simplify the title. The chosen one was none other than Spider-Ham, created by Tom DeFalco and Mark Armstrong in 1983, as we said at the time.
The comic was called Street Fighter Spider-Ham. It was a five-page adventure that was published thanks to Dan Cuddy and Alan Kupperberg, whose cover appears in Marvel Tales No. 247 (1991) is a supplement. Directed by Bill Mantlo and Ron Frenz, the original adventure brought together the paths of Spiderman, The New Mutants, Cloak and Dagger, while the plot of the filler adventure revolved around an overpowered survivalist. As Peter Porker faced comic limbo, the series was about to be canceled. For a Marvel project that was seen as a joke, this kind of ending was undoubtedly very fitting.
Street poet Ray’s chances in the audiovisual world?
We know that Marvel Studios has released some projects involving unknown characters, such as a future series about the masked crime fighter known as the Blonde Phantom, but it seems less likely to be decided at a specific time. It’s a forgotten project that should never have reached Marvel’s catalog to do something with Street Fighter Rey.