Dark Horse has pulled the plug on Michael Chabon Presents: The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, making November’s issue #8 the last in the series, the anthology’s main artist revealed today.

Steve Rolston, in a LiveJournal posting and an e-mail to his fans, announced the series would be relaunched “in a series of more affordable packages,” including a six-issue mini-series, The Escapists, due in stores in July.

“While this does mean you’ll have to wait until the summer, it also means you won’t have to wait as long between issues and the price tag will be much more affordable for those who weren’t keen on the anthology format,” Rolston said.

Rolston’s announcement indicates The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist #9, due in stores this Wednesday, will not hit shelves after all. No word on what will happen to the stories completed for that book.

Brian K. Vaughan, writer for The Escapists, said in a forum posting that the decision was made “because Dark Horse felt that our story deserved a wider audience, and Mr. Chabon agreed that a relaunched monthly series (with a significantly more affordable cover price) would help us reach exactly that.”

“It’s a drag that people will have to wait a few more months to see Steve Rolston and Jason Alexander’s stuff, but I honestly think this might be the best book I’ve ever been a part of, so I’m grateful that DH is working hard to get it into many more hands,” Vaughan said.

Michael Chabon, in an e-mail, said he was “just glad and grateful to Dark Horse that they’re sticking with it at all and impressed that they’re planning to honor all their outstanding commitments to the writers and artists who had already been hired to do work for the quarterly.”

He added he was happy more readers would get to see Vaughan’s story line, saying “it’s just such great stuff.”

Rolston indicated the first two issues of The Escapists would feature the first part of the story arc already seen in the current anthology. Issue #1 will feature Philip Bond’s art, and issue #2, due in August, will feature Rolston.

Chabon had indicated almost a month ago that changes were in the works, but had said at the time they would probably be “nothing as drastic as outright cancellation.” The Escapist had suffered poor sales since its inception, selling only 4,594 copies of issue #8, less than half of its first issue in February 2004.

During the past three weeks, this site has been on an unannounced break while its operator took a much-needed vacation. Consequently, a lot of news did not get covered. Here’s just a few of the more juicy tid-bits:

Following a report on this site about a drop in sales for The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, Michael Chabon announced that “changes, as yet unspecified but probably nothing as drastic as outright cancellation, are in the works.””One cannot expect even the infinitely patient and forebearing people at Dark Horse Comics to carry this weak sister indefinitely, at least not without making some changes,” he said over at his site on Dec. 21.

The Vancouver Courier ran an article about Escapist artist Steve Rolston on Jan. 1 and asked him a little about his new gig.”I tend to be a little wary of comics about making comics,” Rolston told the paper, “but this one is done so well and it’s so brilliant that I love it. And the whole comic within a comic book thing, it’s more than that.”

Rolston also showed the paper images of Roth.

“He is my kind of character,” Rolston said. “He’s a guy who loves comics and he’s not the most social butterfly, so I think most comic book creators can relate.”

The New York Times published new evidence on Jan. 9 that could prove San Francisco author JT LeRoy, who is said to be friends with Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, is a 40-year-old, middle-class woman instead of a former male hooker.Neither Chabon or Waldman have publicly reacted yet. But Dave Eggers told the San Francisco Chronicle that if the report was correct, “then I was fooled by the JT LeRoy persona as much as anyone.”

“I actually edited a story, ‘Harold’s End,’ by LeRoy, and spent hours on the phone — with someone — going through a typical line-edit,” Eggers said.

The Sacramento Bee published a short interview with Waldman about her newest novel, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits.

Waldman’s newest Salon column hit the net this week. In it, she discusses her mother-in-law, aka Chabon’s mom.”My mother-in-law’s style is much more subtle than my own,” she writes. “Because of her natural reserve she would never have mentioned our rivalry, and it’s even possible that she didn’t feel it. Or at least wouldn’t acknowledge the feeling. But it was there, lurking under the surface of even our most positive of interactions.”

Comic stores ordered only 4,594 copies of Michael Chabon Presents: The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist #8 in November, the lowest number since the series’ debut, according to ICv2 and Diamond.

Dark Horse distributes its titles to comic stores exclusively by Diamond. However, these numbers do not include other sales outlets, specifically bookstores, where the Escapist can commonly be found.

ICv2’s estimates, released Monday and based on Diamond’s US sales indexes and publisher sales data, also do not include sales by Diamond UK, orders made after November, or copies still in Diamond’s inventory.

Even with these exceptions, though, the numbers do give some insight into the business-side of the Escapist anthology. November’s sales are less than half what issue #1’s were in February 2004, when it sold 9,695 copies.

However, compared to the previous issue, sales only dropped 386 issues. The decline comes despite nabbing hot-property Brian K. Vaughan as a regular writer.

For further November comic sales analysis, head to ICv2.