Amazing Fantasy Primer
In the 2000s Marvel was trying to get beyond bankruptcy by trying new things and taking risks and it was paying off for the most part. The Marvel Knights imprint was reviving a lot of Marvel properties that were dead in the water beforehand. In 2004 they revived Amazing Fantasy. The idea of the book was to introduce new characters to the Marvel Universe in the hopes they could become popular. Although not initially branded as such, the title soon was labeled under the Marvel Next imprint, which showcased the “next generation” of Marvel heroes. This was Marvel’s first real attempt to creating a new line of gender and culturally diverse superheroes to try and appeal to as many readers as possible.
The first six issues were written by Fiona Avery, a writer who came on board at Marvel along with J. Michael Straczynski and assisted him with some plots on his run of Amazing Spider-Man. During her run on Amazing Fantasy, she created the character Araña. The title was supposed to expand on the company that was run by Ezekiel Sims, Webcorps, and their conflict with the Sisterhood of the Wasp. It also features artwork by Mark Brooks. It’s a somewhat interesting story about two warring clans. I’d like to think that Marvel wanted her to come up with a new Spider-Woman-esque character in everything but name since most other comics featuring Spider-Woman didn’t do very well. Well, fans responded well enough to Araña that the character was spun off to her own series Araña: The Heart of the Spider. Unfortunately, the series suffered from having too grand an idea and not a lot of sales. The end result is that the whole conflict between Webcorps and the Sisterhood of the Wasp has largely been ignored by new writers. Instead, they’ve removed whatever made Araña unique and made her another generic spider-character by the time the Spider-Island story arc came around. Which is to say while Araña’s original powers were unique, they were hardly impressive.
Starting in issue #7, the series shifted focus on a new female Scorpion character created by Frank Van Lente and Leonard Kirk. It’s your typical daughter gets super-powers from AIM turns against mom and joins SHIELD kind of story, there’s not really a whole lot I can say about it other than the fact that I found it pretty underwhelming. By issue 10, the title started including back-up features that were just as forgettable as the main book. Issues #10 started back-ups featuring another new character, the Vampire by Night.
By issue #13, things changed up again, with a modern-day western tale about a new character called Vegas, with back-up stories featuring Captain Universe.
Issue #15 decided to celebrate the original Amazing Fantasy #15 which featured the first appearance of Spider-Man. In response, they did a bunch of stories to introduce a bunch of new characters, and then included a really unnecessary story explaining who Spider-Man was carrying in his arms on the cover of Amazing Fantasy #15. The only lasting character that was introduced in this character is Amadeus Cho, who would go on to be a large part of the Hulk’s extended cast of characters, even becoming a Hulk himself for a short period of time. Issues 16 to 20 focused on Death’s Head 3.0, giving an origin of sorts to the Death’s Head units that were appearing in the Planet Hulk storyline. Given the writing, duties was Simon Furman, the writer who created the original Death’s Head. The story takes place in an alternate future, reads way to much like one of the overly complicated cyber-punk Marvel UK comics of the 90s. More importantly, it doesn’t really explain where the Death’s Head units from Planet Hulk come from, but I digress. There were also a number of secondary stories trying to revive Marvel’s old New Universe line.
The series ended its run after 20 issues. As I write this (July 2020) this is the last volume of Amazing Fantasy that has been printed. I would not be surprised if they revive the title in 2022 when Spider-Man celebrates his 60th anniversary though.
