Trivia / The Order (2007)

• Divorced Installment: The Order was supposed to be a revival of The Champions, a Marvel team book from the '70s that starred Black Widow, The Incredible Hercules, Angel, Iceman and Ghost Rider. Unfortunately, Marvel had lost the trademark to the name "Champions," so the series had to be named something else.
• Torch the Franchise and Run: Matt Fraction ended The Order by having the whole team curb-stomped by Ezekiel Stane, which included the team leader having to Mercy Kill one of the members to stop her Superpower Meltdown from destroying LA. To add insult to injury, Stane only did it to piss off Tony Stark, and when he appeared as the villain in the first arc of Fraction's Invincible Iron Man none of the surviving Order members got to be involved in taking him down. There's a fan-theory that this was a metafictional Take That, Audience!, with Ezekiel representing Marvel fans who are only interested in forty-year-old characters and don't support series with new characters.
• What Could Have Been: The Order was originally going to be a revival of Champions (1975), but it turned out that Marvel had lost the trademark in the years since the original volume's cancellation.