The First Wave
1998-1999: You've got the first year, with the original three titles; Spider-Girl, A-Next and J2 with 12 issues released apiece, as well as Spider-Girl #0, a reprint of the original What if #105 tale.
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| A-Next #1 |
1999-2000: The second year saw A-Next and J2 replaced by the short-lived Fantastic Five and Wild Thing, lasting for only 5 issues apiece (and a special Wild Thing #0 released through Wizard magazine) before cancellation. The Spider-Girl title was kept around as a sort of home-base title for the others to orbit around, an idea which was both fortunate and ironic considering the brief publishing history of the other titles.
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| Fantastic Five (volume 1) #1 |
2000-2001: The third 'year' for MC2 brought only two mini series, but hey, they were some darn good 3-issue-apiece mini series; The Buzz and Darkdevil. Let's call these first three years the first wave of MC2 titles. After this, Spider-Girl would be the only comic carrying the MC2 banner for a very long time...
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| Darkdevil #1 |
The Second Wave
Fast forward to 2005: Nearly 8 years into the MC2 imprint's run we had one more show of faith from Marvel. It was called Last Hero Standing, it was a 5 issue mini series and it was a revolution. Not only did we get a new MC2 comic, we got all of the previous characters, we got old favorites returning and most importantly....we got the second wave of MC2 series.
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| Last Hero Standing #1 |
2006-2007: The original Spider-Girl series reached a momentous Marvel milestone with issue #100 and was, finally cancelled...for a whole month before being relaunched as The Amazing Spider-Girl. Add to this a sequel-of-sorts to Last Hero Standing with Last Planet Standing (Galactus is in this one!).
2007-2008: Amazing Spider-Girl would continue with a compliment of mini series: Avengers Next (giving the A-Next crew a second volume) and Fantastic Five (you guess it, another second volume) both featuring fun art by the criminally underrated Ron Lim working with Scott Koblish.
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| Avengers Next #1 |
2008-2009: More Amazing Spider-Girl and yet another mini series, this time focusing on a single character: American Dream. Amazing Spider-Girl ends with issue #30 only to escape cancellation again, instead seeing publication in Amazing Spider-Man Family. It's noteworthy that Spider-Girl becomes Marvel's first digital exclusive comic at this point too, as May's adventures (collectively dubbed 'Spectacular Spider-Girl' online) appear on Marvel's Digital Comics Unlimited service prior to being physically published in 'Family'.
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| American Dream: Beyond Courage TPB |
2009-2010: Spider-Girl tales soon transferred to Web of Spider-Man, as well as continuing in the online service. By this point, I think a lot of fans became pretty apprehensive about the future of the character. Being published in your own title is one thing. Being a back up feature is a completely different thing.
2010-2011: Just when everything looked dire, Marvel announced a new ongoing series for everyone's favorite web-stunner: Spectacular Spider-Girl. There was much rejoicing. Then they changed their minds; now it was a 4-issue mini series. Then the unthinkable happened: Spider-Girl: The End was announced. Then within a month of this devastating news, a new Spider-Girl series was announced....only it wasn't our Spider-Girl. Araña. Sometimes Marvel doesn't think these things through....
All that's left to mention now is American Dream's featured role in the Captain America Corps mini series by the legendary Roger Stern and the very talented Philippe Briones.
Hopefully one day the MC2 will see a renaissance and come back bigger and brighter than ever.
Until then, I'll keep the candle in the window
frogoat
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