According to Marvel’s June solicitations, Spider-Girl is being cancelled after 8 issues. You can see the solicit after the jump, as it contains some spoilers for those that may be waiting for the trade.
SPIDER-GIRL #8
Written by PAUL TOBIN
Penciled by CLAYTON HENRY
Cover by JELENA KEVIC-DJURDJEVIC
FINAL ISSUE!
With her roommate kidnapped and her life on the line, Spider-Girl uncovers the true identity of her father’s murderer, but will the knowledge force her into an action that she’ll regret for the rest of her life? It’s all more pressure than any normal 16 year old girl could bear, but what if Spider-Girl wasn’t normal anymore? A shocking change in the life of Anya Corazon awaits in this fate-filled issue!
I’ll leave my gleeful editorializing to the message boards. You can leave a comment there or put your thoughts to electronic words below.
Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Spotify
Pandora
Amazon Music
iHeartRadio
Podbean
Amazon Alexa
Player.fm
Listen Notes
Stitcher
Holy shit George is on board for a Marvel book. We’ve wore him down. LOL.
I’m not much on Rucka’s stuff what stuff of his did you like? I read his Wolverine back in the day and I wasn’t’ that impressed. I read his Spidey Quality of Life mini too and didn’t care for it. However, I think that had to do with the MTV cartoon graphics.
I’ll consider getting back into Avengers when it’s got more of a classic feel to it and when it’s down to one book again. As a longtime Avengers fan none of the Bendis stuff has ever felt very Avengery to me and it’s got characters in it that, while I like, feel out of place in an Avengers title (i.e. Wolverine, formerly Strange, Spidey in a regular spot.) I get that people dig it and more power to them; it’s just an aesthetic thing for me and I realize it also means I probably won’t be following any Avengers title for a long, long time.
I can understand the “Well it sells” angle. It’s just not palatable to me.
But I will definitely check out Rucka’s Punisher. Now you can say you got to me to buy a Marvel title again and that it’s sweater season in Hell. =)
I’m looking but I don’t see that there’s any more Avengers books than there usually are. Maybe “Secret”? The family of books is still about the same size. We just brand them more effectively. If you’re torn on which one to read, you can probably get by with just plain ol’ Avengers.
“Avengers” is a title the market has faith in right now, we’d be crazy and irresponsible not to give readers and retailers what they want and what they can sell. Especially as we ramp up to a movie.
SW
Cool. Glad you dig it. The first issue is an outstanding, gun-filled read….and not at all what people might be expecting.
We did have an Arana book that didn’t do so well a few years back even though the market was much stronger and it came out of a big marketing push, so I’m extremely confident that calling this Spider-Girl was the right idea. Sorry you disagree.
And again this isn’t the end of the Spider-Girl announcements.
SW
“Sorry we publish Avengers books you may not want.”
Not saying it’s not “what I want,” though I’m not following any of them. Just seems like overexposure to have so damn many, just as it is to have Spider-Man in half of the eight billion Avengers titles (especially when they keep showing up in his book) and also, soon, the Fantastic Not-Four.
Calling it ‘Arana’ might have worked better than calling it ‘Spider-Girl.’ No way of really knowing, like you say. Yet it seems like calling it ‘Spider-Girl’ made it recognizable to a book of the same name that just got canceled right before.
Marvel’s certainly pleasantly guilty of “knowing what it’s doing,” at least from time to time. Getting Rucka on Punisher is a fantastic idea and I think it has the potential to be far better than what Ennis did. I might even buy it.
Sorry we publish Avengers books you may not want. Thems the breaks. I never liked West Coast Avengers, but I didn’t blame Marvel for publishing it if they thoughjt they had an audience.
That said, your theory still doesn’t hold water.
SW
I should have been more clear. By ‘team book’ I meant something with a higher profile than a Young Allies title. Perhaps a spot, for example, in one of the 17,000 Avengers titles.
#39
Maybe. No way of really knowing…though my experience tells me otherwise. I certainly don’t think DC has the “way better” track record you think they do. Certainly not in a long, long time. Amidst all your untested theories though, it’s just a lousy time to launch just about any comic and, unfortunately female leads are always risky. Won’t stop trying though. It’s even worth putting up with the nay-sayers.
And as much as I wish May had a huge following she simply didn’t. Even if you assume that NONE of the people reading the old Spider-Girl book were reading the new book and then added ALL the Mayday readers in, we still would have been in trouble.
I agree with the poster above that we probably should have tried to tie into Spidey’s world a bit sooner than we did, but then you run the risk of people saying the book is “too tightly tied in”. (What’s the buzzword for that? “Approachable”? I can’t think of it.)
I do think that these are all conclusions you probably could have written before Marvel made any decision at all (perhaps you did, you little fortune teller, you) since they put the conclusion before the facts. As one example: We launch solo books out of the Avengers that don’t do great numbers right now as well, so I’m not sure that the evidence is clear that putting Spider-Girl on a team first would have helped anything. And calling the book “Arana” may have made some people here feel better, but there’s no way that that would have helped the book. At the very least retailers would have hated it since it has next-to-no recognition. Spider-Girl is a concept people get.
What’s certain is that Marvel never has any idea what they’re doing. Right?
SW
“The better way to have done this would have been to start developing Arana way before Mayday’s cancellation, probably in a team book, to try to get more interest in her and to give more potential readers a reason to give a ____.”
That’s more or less what was going on with Arana, in the Young Allies ongoing. And she was still being called Arana there (and I have the comic to prove it). The name change was taking place at around issue 6.
Of course, that got cancelled too. What a cruel world when these books get cancelled and stuff like Shadowland gets numerous reprintings.
@39
THANK YOU.
What this proves is that it was a terrible idea to take away a fan favorite character (Mayday) and then immediately try to replace her with a character that fans have had a less than marginal interest at best. It was a bad gamble and in the end everyone with a vested interest lost – both fans of Mayday who had followed her adventures for over a decade and now fans of Arana who followed her for… well way less than a decade.
This sort of thing is something DC can pull off way better since they have a much bigger track record of ‘legacy’ characters. Which is funny since Arana wasn’t a true legacy character until she got the ‘Spider-Girl’ name. The characters came from two different realities, after all.
The better way to have done this would have been to start developing Arana way before Mayday’s cancellation, probably in a team book, to try to get more interest in her and to give more potential readers a reason to give a damn. This should have also been followed by a cooling off period following Mayday’s cancellation. Canceling the popular character and then dropping someone else into a book with said character’s name was unfortunate. Additionally, just giving Arana a book called ‘Arana’ and not ‘Spider-Girl’ may have worked better. As it was many potential readers probably saw the ‘Spider-Girl’ name on the first issue and thought “Well they just canceled a Spider-Girl book, so this probably won’t be any different.” Hell, some may have even thought this was actually a limited series.
Now that I think about it the perfect place for Anya right now would be the Future Foundation.
@BD – I’m not a regular Supergirl reader, but at least on the surface it seems to me that she is much more a part of Superman’s life and mythos than Anya is with Spider-Man. Other than the name there doesn’t seem to be anything binding the characters together. Seems to me that Peter would be absolutely determined not to let another young girl die wearing his symbol, but so far he seems to be just as blissfully ignorant of Anya as he was of Mattie Franklin.
That has nothing to do with me not enjoying the book, but working on some common ground between the two would go a long way towards making the character more interesting for me at this point. Pete could at least hook her up with some quality gear now that he’s rolling in dough.
@ BD: I do agree with you BD, but even I have to admit there were 2 things that may have caused the Spider-girl series to be canceled…
1. the MAJOR one was that this series got started just as soon as the Old one was gone.
2. the Death of her father upon the second issue, tends to turn potential readers off.
I will admit that I am a major fan of Defalco’s Mayday stories, but I did try the first issue of Tobin’s Spider-girl and did enjoy it. While I don’t go to my LCS often, I have read what happen after the first issue and was amazed with how quickly the killed off the dad in the second issue.
After that I briefly look into the series, but to me, despite what Tobin is trying to do, that is a major turn off. As, I don’t think anyone could rebound from that even with the aid of friends like the FF.
My hope is that maybe that Marvel could allow Tobin to do an Spider-girl tale with her working along side the FF, if possible.
That’s exactly my thinking. I have a daughter as well and, so help me, I will find a way to get Spider-Girl stuff in stores for her!
First off I’m never happy when people loose their jobs. I am a DeFalco fan and love Mayday, however I did give this book a chance and I liked it. I thought it was well written and had great art. So I really don’t understand the hatred of this character. As a father who has a daughter I find it sad the fans can’t support a spider-girl book. Supergirl toys, shirts etc are everywhere, finding Spider- girl stuff is damn hard. I really wish the book would gave succeed because it’s always sad when a new character can’t support a book in this tough economy .
Despite liking the character in her earlier runs I found literally nothing to enjoy in these first few issues, so I’m not particularly saddened by this loss. I couldn’t care less what name she ended up with (although I’d hoped by giving her the Spider-Girl moniker they would have made a greater effort to tie her closer to Spider-Man in some way). I just didn’t care for the direction they took the character. Killing her father? The Red Hulk? Didn’t appeal to me. The Twitter feed thing didn’t help either.
My sympathies to those who were enjoying the series. As for these upcoming changes Anya is scheduled to undergo…as long as she doesn’t become Madame Web’s kid side-kick. Anything but that.
Ha! Civility lessons from a guy called “BerserkFury”! I love it.
Wacker has the nerve to tell someone else to stay classy. Hilarious.
If you say so.
@Steve re the rule for writers
I agree and disagree. While writing is obviously important for potential writers, seeing how other analyze a story and look at the pros and cons can be good tips on how to write a story yourself. If I hear a lot of the same pros or cons in lots of stories, I know those are techniques to use or avoid
@Stephen – I hear that, I’m actually doing some writing on the side (much longer than I’ve been here) but when I saw this opportunity to review I took it so I could have another outlet to hone my writing skills and be able to actually analyze comics so if I ever do get a chance *fingers crossed* quit my job and pursue writing them I’d have some insight. The same reason you hang around fansites I would assume to get feedback and keep your finger on the pulse.
I have no problem with anger everybody, i just like to try and play peacemaker… can’t we all just get along? 😉 now who wants to sign Kumbaya with me?
#19-
One CAN argue anything particularly on the internet. That doesn’t mean every argument is sensible. (See above for many examples)
The idea tha calling the book Arana would have been a good business or creative is self-evidently wrong. Spider-Girl is by far the more marketable name. It wasn’t stolen or hi-jacked from anyone. It’s ours.
And i should mention that there’s more to this story than has been announced. (Sorry, anonymous haters)
SW
@Brian Bradley
No worries. Good writing will win out.
As a rule for writers though, I don’t think hanging out on fansites is what you need to do to get better. If you want to write, go write.
I hate that every new book I get seems to die horribly quickly. SWORD, Young Allies, now Spider-Girl.
The book had a great writer and artist but was doubly damned in that it was about a minority female character; neither sells well or attracts that many readers and put together it spelt “low sales disaster” all over it. That isn’t my personal opinion just a sad fact I’ve seen reading comics as I love female characters and want to see other minority characters get more play, but there’s very few books about them.
About the name issue: it may seem like a mute issue now but calling the book “Arana” would’ve gotten lower sales as no one would’ve know who she was even with a back-up in Amazing. I have 3 friends, who I didn’t know were that into comics, each come up to me separately asking if I was reading the Spider-girl comic and if I knew when the new issue was out. I doubt they would’ve picked up the book if it was called “Arana” because she has no name recognition unlike a “Spider-*blank*” comic does since everyone knows who Spider-Man is.
My 2 cents for what little it’s worth.
@#20
You meant #14… moron.
@22
I wasn’t angry until I was “vilified…” by Wacker.
@21
It’s the Delta/Zeta scenario all over again. You’re allowed to feel how you feel, make no mistake. But that applies to me as well, and I just don’t care. And it’s one post. Do I picket this site every day over this character? No. Does this news please me… oh yes.
@Two-Bit… that was by far one of the funniest links I’ve clicked on in a while. Thank you. And sorry about the loss :-/
@Steve… “It’s pretty clear this is just masking the standard Spidey rage the site has become known for.”… you and your broad strokes continue to make me sad. How will I ever convince you to let me write Spider-Man if this is what you think of all of us. Dreams ruined!
And in general about Spider-Girl, I mean I know she was a popular character for a bunch of people, but I mean this is by far not the first time a character name has been given to somebody else. How many freakin’ Spider-Women do we have? How many little boyfriends did Batman prance around? We all should know that the name was only used to boost sales and that obviously didn’t work. A lot of you are now vindicated, no reason to get angry about everything again. Let poor Two-Bit have his moment of mourning in peace.
I realize that a lot of you guys are getting a lot of enjoyment out of this news, perhaps to ridiculous levels, if I may say so.
The fact that this greatly displeases me is an understatment, and this is coming from someone who was buying the book BEFORE he became the official reviewer. In four short issues I fell in love with this character, so I take GREAT issue with people bashing her, just like a lot of you would if I started bashing Mayday, which I never did in the forum that was given me, by the way.
Please take into consideration that they are many like myself who enjoyed this book, and be considerate of them.
Was it a bad editorial decision to change Anya’s alias to Spider-girl? Yes. But “a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.” That’s how I feel about this character.
@SW
Just reread comment #15. Arguing with you gets boring quickly. Especially when I can’t use profanity.
15- I’m not really sure if Spider-Girl would be considered a co-op- one can argue that the mantle was passed from father to daughter, as opposed to being two unconnected characters with the same name. Mayday didn’t decide to take the name of Spider-Girl from someone- it was all her own. Also the name and identity of Spider-Man is slightly diferent from Spider-Girl. Spider-Girl was a different character than Spider-Man, and the different name reflected that. With Arana, it seemed that the name was just taken to call her Spider-Girl- there was no reason to call her Spider-Girl when she already had a name (Arana).
+-*aw I was enjoying the book. And the reviews of the book 🙁
“You’re”!!
Arggh! My grammatical nemesis strikes again!!
14-
heh. Calling anyone your arguing with a troll is very 1996.
Spider-Girl herself “co-opted the identity of a hero…just to bring in readers”, so that’s an inconsistent criticism to say the least.
After a great 11 year run and many, many attempts to keep the book going, Spider-Girl had run it’s course. If it had been selling we more than likely would have found a way to keep both.
So one doesn’t really have to do with the other. It’s pretty clear this is just masking the standard Spidey rage the site has become known for.
SW
@11
Doesn’t change the fact that she’s canceled, and I couldn’t be happier. Let her join the books she ruined. Troll away if you think it will change anything.
@Venomaniac: Pretty much. The one and only reason I had a problem with this book is that it was called Spider-Girl. It’s the same problem that I have always had with Ben Reilly, even though I enjoyed his time as Spider-Man (which was the only good portion of the Clone Saga) — he should NEVER have been given the mantle, and thus he needed to go away.
Thawn posted something on the message board that I think makes clear Spidertour and Enigma’s mindsets and why they feel the way they do:
” You don’t co-opt the identity of a hero that a lot of us like for another hero just to bring in readers. It’s bad form. If this had been titled Arana (as it should have) nobody would have had the pitchforks out. This deserved to fail strictly on principal, regardless of quality.
My condolences to the readers who were enjoying the title.”
Heh. You certainly represent well.
Given your hysterics, the fact that you have problem tells me we’re probably on the right track.
SW
@stephen wacker
As opposed to what… the vile character assassination going on in the regular Spider-man book? Guess what, I don’t give a **** about Carlie Cooper, either! How’s that for class? If I could, I’d throw that plot device under a bus!
I’m not gonna put up with this. So I hate, not dislike, PURELY HATE this character. At least I’m not going back and rewriting history and retconning stuff to justify myself without any regrets towards long time readers that I may alienate in the process. In my opinion, THAT reeks far more of lacking class than a simple ” I don’t like her.” Why not go write some Black Cat fetish fiction or something. Maybe that’ll make you feel better. If I have to deal with the fact that you guys are just going to continue writing my beloved character inappropriately regardless of how I feel about it, YOU’RE gonna have to accept that I DO have a problem with it.
Class dismissed.
#8
I’m sure. Like I said: stay classy.
I don’t know if you’re a “horrible human being”, but you certainly are an inconsistently sensitive one one given your whinging when someone critiques one of your reviews.
Dishing it out is more your thing, it seems. Perhaps lightening up a bit would work?
SW
@Steve: Hey, I’ve made it clear from Day One that I was openly rooting for this book to fail and that it exposed me as a horrible human being. 😛
EDIT: And here’s one of my quotes, from my review to The Amazing Spider-Man #648 …
What a vile sentiment.
You two stay classy!
SW
@Enigma_2099: AMEN, BROTHER!
They screwed up TWO characters over this girl. All I’ll say to Anya is…
… Get out, and don’t let the door hit you where the good lord split you….
They picked a really poor time for this series. (After cancelling the original Spider-girl which already had a small but strong fan base.)
I pretty much saw this one coming.
Its pretty sad. It was a very good book. Guess there is a curse on the spider-girl mantle….
http://www.nooooooooooooooo.com/
It wasn’t a bad start to a series, but it was nothing I had a particular interest in.
Still, I enjoyed the writing, if not the characters.