John Rozum wrote the first four issues of Static Stock for DC's New 52 replacing the previously announced Felicia Henderson, before walking off the book after only four issues. When he first left, he stated “I’ve been very happy overall with my time at DC over the roughly 15 years that I’ve worked for them, and I plan to continue working with them into the future. The feeling is mutual.”
The "overall" seemed to stick out a little bit. Today, he spoke out on the cancellation of
Static Shock:
Static definitely had the best potential of all DC Superheroes of Color… and should have treated like an A-list character, with a huge push.
But, of course, I’m not in the least bit surprised that this is how it turned out.
He went on further to speak on how he hit some road blocks trying to develop the character as well as getting the attention he thought
Static deserved:
I went into Static Shock with a lot of high hopes. Among them was showing that Static wasn’t simply an A-list character, but one of the most powerful in the DCnU. I really wanted this series to be fun and exciting and to bring the same degree of creativity to it that I put into Xombi balanced with making Virgil’s personal life at least as engaging as his superhero life. I also saw Static Shock as an excellent gateway through which to pull the rest of the Milestone characters into the DCnU.
I quickly learned that none of these plans were going to see fruition. I wound up being shunted to the sidelines as the writer while Scott McDaniel’s “high concept” criminal syndicate made up of Power Rangers and a big monosyllabic thug took center stage and Harvey [Richards, editor]‘s ideas of the 2 Sharon’s and slicing off Static’s arm were implemented as desperate means of trying to draw attention to the book.
I tried my best to keep it from being a total turd, but as I said, I was completely sidelined. My main contributions were the Pale Man character, Guillotina, naming the school after Dwayne McDuffie, and including Hardware, along with random lines of dialogue. I decided it was unethical to stick with a title that a) I thought was garbage b) that people were buying because of my involvement, due to Xombi, when really I had nothing to do with it c) because I wasn’t being utilized on the title.
Frankly, Static deserved a lot better.