Family Issues

No, I'm not talking about my own family, but the bi-monthly anthology book, Spider-Man Family.

For $4.99 you get a Spider-Man story that usually has Spidey teaming with other heroes of the Marvel universe, some reprints (one of the latest is the excellent Death & Destiny), and a story from Spider-Man J. The new stories are usually pretty good and reprints aren't too shabby either, but I've never cared for Spider-Man J and wouldn't lose any sleep if it left the book.

After SMF #9, the book will be relaunched and the title changed to Amazing Spider-Man Family. My guess is Marvel hopes to boost sales by adding "Amazing" to the title. As anyone knows, Amazing Spider-Man is the longest running Spidey book and the most successful. I'm all for boosting sales of this book as they are not even close to that of ASM, but I'm not too thrilled with the way Marvel is going about it. Get this, they want to include stories from Brand New Day world in ASMF. Ugh.

Marvel has already ticked off a good chunk of the Spider-Man fan base with One More Day/Brand New Day. Many have stopped buying ASM because of it and whether the company wants to admit it or not, the sales of that book have shown a very noticeable decline. My fear is that ASMF will sell even less because outraged fans (myself included) do not want to support Brand New Day. And does BND really need more page space? Good freaking grief, ASM is out three times a month and will soon have an additional book with Brand New Day Extra. And what will be removed to in ASMF to make room for the BND material? As much as I dislike Spider-Man J, I'd rather have it stick around than have BND stories in the book.

For now, ASMF will stay on my pull list because the first issue is already sounding really cool. Still, the BND stuff in the book just rubs me the wrong way and I hope it doesn't last long.