Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Black Panther & the Crew comic has been canceled

After just two issues, Marvel is canceling Black Panther & The Crew, writer Ta-Nehisi Coates’ latest series following Black Panther and some of Marvel’s better known black characters. Coates tells The Verge that the cancellation is due to poor sales, and the series will end after six issues. However, the story currently being told will have the chance to end.

Black Panther & the Crew launched last month, and follows Black Panther, Misty Knight, Luke Cage, Storm, and former Avenger Manifold as they grapple with police violence in Harlem. Coates teamed with poet Yona Harvey to weave a mystery around a character named Ezra Keith, who dies while in police custody. The story is certainly timely, reflecting the years of high-profile police killings of black men, women, and children like Sandra Bland and Jordan Edwards.

However, Coates never set out to make pronouncements about the state of the country. Rather, the series was a chance to delve deeper into characters and their experiences. “The Crew was an opportunity to get inside them as black people,” he said.

Coates says that “the mystery will be solved,” even though the series couldn’t find an audience. Meanwhile, he just recently entered the second season on his Hugo Award-nominated run on Black Panther.

Black Panther & the Crew is a revival of former Marvel editor Christopher Priest’s 2003 series The Crew. That series followed a different group of black superheroes coping with loss. It, too, was canceled.