{"id":31598,"date":"2026-03-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=31598"},"modified":"2024-06-15T01:44:45","modified_gmt":"2024-06-15T05:44:45","slug":"mcp-vol-2-1-gsaxm-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2026\/03\/07\/mcp-vol-2-1-gsaxm-1\/","title":{"rendered":"MCP Vol. 2 1\/GSAXM 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Finally for this block, a look at 2 more titles with Spider-Man in them that are not Spider-Man titles. Marvel Comics Presents is back. This was the 2nd try. But, the truth is, anthologies just don\u2019t seem to sell too well, and MCP has never managed even a fraction of the run of Vol. 1 in subsequent tries. This issue saw print the same month as parts 1 & 2 of One More Day, and it contains a Spider-Man short. The cover by J. Scott Campbell is a wraparound, and the back is way weaker for some reason:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Man that guy draws weird faces. The big news in this title for me was the Hellcat story by the wife\/husband team of Kathryn and Stuart Immonen, a wacky bit of business about Hellcat being made the sole Initiative superhero for Alaska, and hijinks ensuing. It ran for the first 4 issues, then segued into a Hellcat mini by Kathryn and the great David LaFuente. But here on the ol\u2019 blog, our concern is a Spidey joint by Stuart Moore, Clayton Henry, Mark Morales and Sotocolor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Unsurprisingly, I guess, I completely forgot about this. At the time, this would be riffing on the established notion that all Captain Britains in the multiverse were part of the Captain Britain Corps probably, but from 2024, it looks like nothing so much as the prototype for all the Spider-Verse material that\u2019s yet to come. Huh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is short enough I\u2019m just gonna run it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pretty wacky. Honestly, by the time we hit the real Spider-Verse material\u2026 Well, I think this might\u2019ve been a better setup.  Anyway, that brings us to\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When Grant Morrison left X-Men after revolutionizing the property for the early 2000s, Marvel was looking for another big name. They sort of found one in Joss Whedon. He\u2019d made well-liked nerd shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel and Firefly. He wasn\u2019t a massive name in the real world, but for nerds, he was huge. Smarting from the content of the Star Wars prequels, nerds took to wearing t-shirts that said \u201cJoss Whedon is my master now,\u201d a thoroughly insane sentiment. And now, Whedon has pretty thoroughly disgraced himself and you still own that shirt. Maybe be your own master, pal, I don\u2019t know. Anyway, Whedon was paired with star artist John Cassaday, and they did a bunch of increasingly late issues of this new title, Astonishing X-Men. So late that eventually, a new creative team took over, with the promise that Whedon & Cassaday would finish their story in a special later (And this would not be the last time that happened in the coming years, either).  And this is that. We\u2019re actually skipping ahead a little, for a change in this block, as this is published the month after ASM 557, but that\u2019s fine. Spider-Man is in this more than I remembered despite not figuring into the rest of the run. This run saw such events as the introduction of the perennial fan favorite X-Man, Armor, the blossoming of the romance between Cyclops and Emma Frost, the much needed return from the dead of Colossus, and the absolutely terrible idea to have the Danger Room be sentient and enslaved by Professor X. Along the way, Kitty Pryde got trapped in a giant bullet flying through space. Look, these things happen. So, now, it\u2019s time for Whedon and Cassaday and the great colorist Laura Martin to get her out. But, like, these are the first pages:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It doesn\u2019t just have Spider-Man in it, it\u2019s from his perspective to start! Unusual choice. And not a great voice for him. Man, the Whedonism. His brand of humor became so overexposed after the first Avengers movie. The backlash is intense. We cut to Kitty stuck in her giant bullet, then Colossus confronting the bad guy, who I barely remember. These aliens had kidnapped Colossus and faked his death as some kinda prophecy, and now it\u2019s turning out that was all a lie pushed by this guy who wants to use the unique metal in Colossus\u2019 skin to kill the aliens\u2019 entire race. It\u2019s a whole thing. Also Emma Frost and Cyclops are there fightin\u2019 people. Meanwhile, Wolverine, Armor, Danger, who is the personified Danger Room, Beast, and Agent Brand (The leader of the newly created SWORD, the space agency version of SHIELD, get it?), who Beast is also dating, I think, are hijacking a spaceship to go help them. I think. Also Armor says Colossus doesn\u2019t know about Kitty. I am really coming in blind after not having seen or thought about this series in 17 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Oh, ok, the next page is where Brand reveals she has a thing for Beast, ok. See, I sort of remember things. Well, Colossus fights his guy and then the guy who I think was originally the bad guy helps him and they kill the current bad guy, so he can\u2019t use Colossus to commit genocide anymore. Hey, that\u2019s nice. Back at Earth, the FF heroically combine their powers to send the big bullet to the Negative Zone so it can\u2019t hit Earth, saving the day. But then we learn some kinda mind control or something is on them, and also every other hero with them is living out a fantasy where THEY save the day, with 3 others offered as examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Colossus forces that guy to tell him the big bullets weakness, or else Piotr will declare himself ruler of that guy\u2019s planet, which he can do, for reasons. Look, this is the end of a 25-issue story, I can\u2019t get into everything. Then the X-Men learn Storm and Spider-Man haven\u2019t been able to wake anyone else up. Storm says \u201cthe most powerful seem to be the most powerfully hit,\u201d but if that were true, he never coulda gotten through to her. I\u2019m to believe that Storm\u2019s less powerful than the various junior X-Men in that room? C\u2019mon. Well, things are looking bad, and Emma and Kitty realize they\u2019re not gonna be able to pull off any last minute saves, for her or for the planet Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Across the next 4 pages, Kitty phases a giant bullet through the entire planet, the most insane use of her power she\u2019ll ever pull off. And then\u2026 there\u2019s a bunch of people reacting to her loss! Whoops! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I thought this is where they got her out, but this is actually where she got \u201cpermanently\u201d stuck! Shows what I know. Man, so who got her out? Ah, it was none other than Magento, in the hands of future X-Writer Mr. Matt Fraction, some 3 years hence. A comic I didn\u2019t even read! Boy, my memory really turned to mush on this one. Well, anyway, Spider-Man\u2019s part ended back there before the phase, so that\u2019s it. The End! The X-Men will continue to do incredibly insular things that mostly ignore the rest of the Marvel U elsewhere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That does it for this block. Now that all that old business is out of the way, next time, we’ll continue into the new status quo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Finally for this block, a look at 2 more titles with Spider-Man in them that are not Spider-Man titles. Marvel Comics Presents is back. This was the 2nd try. But, the truth…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864],"tags":[2396,79,2399,136,2394,302,77,2397,49,2127,2392,72,30,64,2346,2395,301,2378,2158,895,378,2398,247,1959,2168,2,138,2393,1710,663],"class_list":["post-31598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2000s","tag-agent-brand","tag-angel","tag-armor","tag-beast","tag-clayton-henry","tag-colossus","tag-cyclops","tag-danger","tag-doctor-strange","tag-emma-frost","tag-giant-size-xastonishing-x-men","tag-human-torch","tag-iceman","tag-iron-man","tag-john-cassaday","tag-joss-whedon","tag-kitty-pryde","tag-laura-martin","tag-mark-morales","tag-marvel-comics-presents","tag-nightcrawler","tag-pixie","tag-reed-richards","tag-sentry","tag-sotocolor","tag-spider-man","tag-storm","tag-stuart-moore","tag-sue-storm","tag-the-thing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31598"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32106,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31598\/revisions\/32106"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}