Spider-Girl No More!

Published on 13 Oct 2008 at 10:39 pm.
Filed under Comics.

After 130 issues of published comics (100 issues of Spider-Girl, and a scheduled 30 issues of Amazing Spider-Girl), Marvel is finally going to pull the plug on the book starring May “Mayday” Parker, the daughter of the married Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson.

In an industry that is very harsh towards new comic books, female character, and teenage characters, Spider-Girl managed to prove a success beyond anyones wildest dreams. Spider-Girl was the only survivor from the MC2 universe, an alternate reality future version of the Marvel universe. This universe was pretty much the only place Marvel acknowledged the whole clone saga that nearly ruined Spider-Man in the early 90’s.

This is not the first time that Spider-Girl has faced cancellation. During the first 100 issues of the original series, Spider-Girl was nearly canceled about four times from my recollection before Marvel announced that following the 100th issue of Spider-Girl they were going to put the book a a short hiatus, only to bring the book back with a new #1 in a move to hopefully draw in new customers. With the new series came variant covers, such as an Ed McGuinness variant for issue #1, and an Arthur Suydam zombie variant for issue #13, and two other variants for the 25th issue. While this series did not do particularly well in the single issue format, it was a hit in the digest format and marketed to the younger crowd.

The near continuous publication of Spider-Girl comics has places her as the the heroine with the third longest issue count to her name once you combine each respective heroine’s various series. She-Hulk is currently on issue 33 of the fourth volume of comics (Sensation She-Hulk ran for 25 issues, Sensational She-Hulk ran for 60 issues, and the initial adjectiveless She-Hulk ran for 12 issues). She-Hulk is only surpassed by Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman is currently on issue 10 of her third volume, with volumes one and two running 329 and 226 issues respectively. An honorable mention goes to the fourth place heroine in Witchblade, who is currently on issue 119.

While I have enjoyed DeFalco’s “Mr. and Mrs. Spider-Man” in the pages of Spider-Man Family, and will accept reading Spider-Girl in said pages, there is a large part of me that is hoping to see a May “Mayday” Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Girl #1 in the near future. 🙂

And yes, I recognize that I used a similar headline not too long ago. The first was for a sensationalistic headline, while this is a very appropriate title for the post (ripping off the headline from Amazing Spider-Man #50).