If only the new Mary Jane Watson series were produced by the right people, but it's not

So Marvel's launching a new Spider-Man spinoff toplining Mary Jane Watson, and they're even going so far as to advertise it with variants on several different series where MJ makes appearances too. The variants, predictably, are employed for her own new solo spinoff proper, including the illustration by Stanley "Artgerm" Lau.

The idea of putting MJ in her own series in itself is a great one, but honestly, not with people like Joe Quesada still around, though it does make clear they're trying hard to mend fences with the Marvel audience they drove away by mandating MJ be kept out of Spidey's world for nearly a dozen years, after Quesada mandated that revolting story from 2007 where her and Peter's marriage was obliterated through a deal with Mephisto. Far as I know, the unmarried status quo still remains, and you know what? If that's how it's going to remain, there's still good reason to steer clear of what could turn out to be a disaster underneath the covers, which'll prove the old adage that you shouldn't judge a book by them. Even if MJ could use her own solo spinoff from Spidey, that doesn't mean the marriage should remain dissolved. It should be restored.

Make no mistake, several of the cover illustrations for this new spinoff, Amazing Mary Jane, are very impressive, including one by famous J. Scott Campbell. But this is still perpetuating the problem of too many variants on books themselves, instead of drawing them as wall pictures you could hang in an art gallery, which I'm sure there's a big market for.

And if the Captain America series by Ta-Nehisi Coates features one of these, they made the mistake of putting good art on a book containing bad stories on the inside.