Tom DeFalco Cancels Barbie?

 

"Bye Bye Barbie" 

May 1994

Writer: Barbara Slate
Penciler: Mary Wilshire
Inker: Trina Robbins
Editor: Hildy Mesnik
Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco

Plot: Barbie and Barbie Fashion editor Hildy Mesnik has to break the news to the artists who produce Barbie that it is canceled. 

This is probably the only related Barbie post I will do, because it features Tom DeFalco. DeFalco, then editor in-chief, tells editor Hildy Mesnik that they are canceling the Barbie titles. DeFalco remarks that girls will just have to read Fantastic Four, a title he was writing at the time. 

Devastated, Hildy calls all the talent on the Barbie comics and tells them that the comic has been canceled. 

However, Hildy decides that she's going to try and save the Barbie comics after all and marches down to DeFalco's office. However, it turns out to have been an April Fool's Day prank that DeFalco and characters of Barbie have played on her. 

There are some interesting codas to this story. Barbie Fashion was canceled a year later in May 1995 and Barbie was canceled in March 1996. Barbara Slate reflected that since she had written the April Fool's Day comic just a year earlier that she felt like the joke had been on her when it was canceled so soon afterwards. DeFalco was no longer Editor in Chief by then. 

Tom DeFalco's most successful comic turned out to be one with a female protagonist, Spider-Girl, whose initial run ran for more than 100 issues, 99 of which were written by him. The following several Spider-Girl series ended up producing 40 more issues of her adventures, which were also written by him.

Hildy Mesnik later ended up marrying Tom DeFalco, so we do have a romantic Barbie style ending to this post.