Fans have a history of saving television shows from cancellation through outpourings of support. In the 1960s, Star Trek fans’ letter-writing campaign even succeeded in persuading network executives to give the show an additional third season.
Lesser known, but equally significant, are the campaigns of comic book fans that keep comic book publishers from canceling favorite books while promoting these books to wider audiences. Recently, few fans have created more effective campaigns than the fans of Marvel Comics’ Spider-Girl.
Who is Spider-Girl?
Created by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz, Spider-Girl is the daughter of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson. Introduced in What If --? #105, Spider-Girl hails from a possible future where Spider-Man retired to raise his daughter May “Mayday” Parker. Upon turning fifteen, May develops spider-powers and decides to continue the “family business.”
Like Spider-Man, who first appeared in a one-shot story for Amazing Fantasy #15, Spider-Girl was never supposed to last beyond one issue. Yet sales were so good that Marvel decided to give Spider-Girl her own comic book.
Fans Spin a Web of Support
Unfortunately sales later dropped, partly because Spider-Girl comics were meant to be sold to younger readers through Target and Wal Mart – a plan that never happened. Faced with cancellation again, Spider-Girl found support from fans of all ages who wrote letters and convinced Marvel Comics to continue the comic book.
This, however, was only the first in several cancellation attempts by Marvel's comic book publishers to end the cult favorite. Fans responded by promoting the comic book in more innovative ways.
“We focused on Marvel at the beginning – a ‘please don’t cancel my book!’ campaign,” states Matt “Venom” Kayser, a moderator on the Amazing Spider-Girl Message Board, over a September 18, 2008 phone interview. “But later campaigns focused on comic book stores – we printed flyers and mailed them to stores across the country.”
Other campaigns let newspapers and magazines such as USA Today and Seventeen know about Spider-Girl in hopes that they would promote the book and encourage comic book subscriptions. Such efforts resulted in stories that ran in several newspapers and magazines including the New York Times and Crain’s New York Business Magazine.
In a move that stunned DeFalco, Spider-Girl fan John Koerner helped fans raise almost a thousand dollars (donating much of the money himself) to buy a full page ad promoting Spider-Girl in Diamond Comic Distributors catalog, Previews.
“I really didn’t think [the fans] should spend that much money on an ad,” states DeFalco over a September 17, 2008 phone interview. “But I am overwhelmed and thankful for this. The team and I always have a responsibility to do our best work. But with Spider-Girl it’s become an even greater responsibility. Because we owe it to the fans – they’re giving us a hundred percent so we have to give them a hundred percent.”
Spider-Girl Digest Comics
While Spider-Girl comics were not initially sold in the mass market, many issues have been packaged into digests which sell well at school book fairs and are available at Borders and Barnes & Noble. Good digest sales also convinced Marvel Comics to keep Spider-Girl going.
The Future of Spider-Girl
Spider-Girl soon earned a reputation as a book that would not end – issue #61 even labeled it “The Series They Could Not Kill!” At one point, DeFalco refused to believe his comic had been un-cancelled again since the announcement was made on April Fool’s Day.
Eventually, however, Spider-Girl ended after reaching issue 100 – making it the longest-running Marvel comic book starring a female hero. This cancellation proved temporary, however, when Spider-Girl reappeared in her new Marvel comic book, The Amazing Spider-Girl.
In October 2008, DeFalco announced The Amazing Spider-Girl would end with issue #30. Fans immediately launched new campaigns to save Spider-Girl -- and were rewarded once more when Spider-Girl gained an online comic book, The Spectacular Spider-Girl, which launched on April 2009. The online comic stories are also printed in the hardcopy anthology Spider-Man comic Amazing Spider-Man Family -- and will be featured in Web of Spider-Man after October, 2009, although many fans would like to see Spider-Girl continue in her own book.
Read Spider-Girl's continuing adventures online at The Spectacular Spider-Girl.
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