My feeling is Thompson was brought on board, had her own ideas she wanted to go with, and no one else wanted to seriously push back on her due to the optics of a male editor questioning a female writer’s story choices (especially since it was only 2 issues). It didn’t help that Pichelli’s art was just… not good. If the art was better, the 2-parter would’ve been a bit more palatable.
Anyway, onward and upward. This next installment looks great from the preview.