This week, Walt Simonson noted that his Orion series would be going the way of the Internet boom with issue #25. The series, critically acclaimed as a fine successor to Kirby's work on the Fourth World titles from the early '70s, was cursed with low sales and is not long for the stands.

But, alas, the idea that a brilliant, well-executed concept would fall prey to market forces is not new.

Apple's Macintosh DuoÑa laptop computer designed to be integrated into a docking station that supported additional input/output ports and a monitorÑcame to haunt the cheap end of the computer classifieds, despite high praise by business consumers and eventual copying by scores of third-party vendors.

Fox's Action, a brutal and insightful look at the Hollywood machine starring Jay Mohr as Peter Dragon, possibly the world's most evil movie producer, was universally regarded as one of the best shows on TV. It lasted maybe eight episodes.

The entire Milestone Media line -- from Blood Syndicate to Static, Hardware to Xombi, Icon to Shadow Cabinet -- was filled with countless innovative ideas and fresh takes on concepts familiar and new. It launched a look at a world a little something like reality, with people of all colors living complicated lives. But the only remnant of this brilliant experiment is Static Shock, beaming at us from the Saturday morning revels of Kids' WB.

Milestone had the poor fortune of launching at the same time as an independent Black company, Ania, was launching a tepid line of books (okay, Purge had some promise, but their Heru book was riddled with historical inaccuracies) and a personal attack against Milestone for not being "Black enough." Add to that the all-too common dilemma of distribution irregularities, lukewarm support from the distributors at DC and a completely unfair and undeserved "hate whitey" image, and you've got a combination that practically killed the line.

Action was a rough, rough show. Scathing. Almost evil. It featured an anti-hero of epic proportions, and that was a hard sell before 10 p.m. It required Miramax levels of support, with the kind of spin that The Sopranos eventually got. Fox, shying away from their not-too-distant trashy past of Married with Children, wasn't ready for the heat and dropped the show quicker than Luther Vandross losing weight for a new boyfriend. With no rug to stand on, Action had the floor yanked out from under it, and we lost the most wickedly entertaining show since Profit (another Fox fumble).

Apple went through some serious management issues, the company leaking money for years under the reign of Gil Amelio. The Duo technology, eventually adapted by Sony and several other third parties, was simply ahead of its time. Now it doesn't have the support that could make it an industry standard in these halcyon gigahertz days.

So when will the industry stop pushing idiotic crossovers on us and start supporting the likes of Orion (or Transmetropolitan or Lucifer)?

The same day they walk up and hand me the keys to the kingdom.