Okay, I’ll bite ...(1) Actually, there IS something wrong with having multiple Spider-Girls around, just like there’s something wrong with having multiple Spider-Men, Captain Americas, Ms. Marvels, Hulks, Thors, Ghost Riders, Black Panthers, and so on. The second that somebody brings up, say, Captain America and I have to ask “Which one?”, we’ve achieved dilution of the brand. Needless to say, diluting a brand is a bad idea. (More on this later.)(2) I didn’t mind the character of Araña on her own -- she was fun when she showed up in the MC2 books to encounter Spider-Girl (the real o-- er, right, I mean the Mayday one). My beef with her is related to the specific circumstances in which she became Spider-Girl and got her push. Let’s recap:-After hanging in there for a while, the ax finally comes down on Spider-Girl. The way Marvel handled this was, of course, a mess. They announced that Mayday’s adventures would continue in digital format, to be collected in print issues under the title The Spectacular Spider-Girl. Then, the first issue was distributed to digital subscribers with the trade dress for a miniseries, revealing that it wasn’t an ongoing without any announcement beforehand. Shortly thereafter, the cancellation was made official.-Shortly after the series is canceled, Marvel announces that Araña is officially being renamed to Spider-Girl and would be getting her own series.The change actually occurred in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man in the arc “Grim Hunt.” I was reviewing the title for a Spider-Man fansite at the time, and I joked in my review of The Amazing Spider-Man #637 that she was included in the story solely to be spun off into her own series again. Hilariously, this spinoff was revealed THE NEXT DAY. (It’s worth mentioning that she was using a borrowed name and a borrowed costume by this point.)-Fans claim that Mayday was eliminated to make way for Anya to become Spider-Girl. Marvel has a disingenuous response to the accusation.The statement was to the effect of, “They’re in different universes, so it doesn’t matter.” Of course, while the fact that they’re in different universes is true, it comes back to that branding issue that I mentioned earlier -- launching a “new” Spider-Girl when the original one is still around would be very confusing. Hence, Mayday was made to disappear in order to facilitate this. The problem was in the clumsy and all-too-quick execution of this plan, leading to the new Spider-Girl debuting when the memory of the original and the poor way that her cancellation was handled were still fresh in readers’ minds.-Marvel promotes the new Spider-Girl with noticeably more effort and aggression than the original Spider-Girl ever received.On the back of canceling Mayday’s series -- which was rarely, if ever, promoted during its run -- Marvel was very aggressive with Anya’s new series. This rubbed a lot of Mayday fans the wrong way, noting that Mayday’s sales would’ve been much stronger if Marvel had bothered to promote the series.-The new Spider-Girl series debuts and immediately tanks.The first issue sales were decent, but even with tie-ins to The Amazing Spider-Man, the numbers dropped off quickly. Notably, the book was below the level at which Mayday’s adventures were selling when her book was canceled. This lead to Anya’s new series getting the quick hook. She received a Spider-Man event tie-in miniseries shortly thereafter, but that didn’t lead to any renewed interest in the character.-Because of how this transition was bungled, both characters were now radioactive.Anya never took off because of the botched transition into Spider-Girl, and Mayday was scuttled to try and launch Anya in the first place. The stench of failure was now all over Anya (remember, this was the second time that the character had been given a failed push), and they had gone all-in on making Mayday disappear and were too far along to simply reverse that. None of Mayday’s stories have been collected in digest or trade since, and it would be nearly four years before she appeared in comics again, during Spider-Verse. (To properly describe what that hatchet job did to the character would probably require an entire essay, so suffice to say, I’ll just leave it alone for now.)So ... yes, I do in fact hate the character of Anya/Araña/New Coke Spider-Girl, but it’s not because of racism or something equally ignorant.
kianamaiart
gummygunk
turnnoffyourmind
titsay
origamiaround
2087
amandla
dailybridgerton