With his final issue of Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane hitting stores tomorrow, writer Sean McKeever sits down with IGN.com for an exit interview of sorts:
Last fall I was getting to the point where I was getting a lot of offers for bigger books. At the time I had a huge load of stuff between what I was working on and what was coming up. Those things wound up not happening, partially because of the exclusive contract. But at the time I realized something had to go to make room for all this stuff. With all that was happening I was going to be crazy-busy.
I had written at that point maybe 24 issues of SMLMJ through all its incarnations and I was just worn out on writing an all-ages teen drama. I enjoy writing that stuff, but I really think I just needed a break. I was trying to decide if I wanted to end it at #20 or 25, and 20 just felt right. I felt the sooner the better, and I knew I could properly wrap up everything I wanted to in that amount of time. I came to Marvel and I told them about that. They were obviously very disappointed about it. At the time they said they’d keep the book around for me whenever I wanted to come back to it. I said, “Well, I’d be fine if you got somebody else to keep the book going,” because I think it’s important to have a series like this. It’s certainly more important to have that series than it is to make sure I’m the guy writing it. It’s an outreach book, and there just aren’t enough books out there that are truly all-ages. So eventually they wound up reconsidering and they picked up Terry Moore for the book. But they didn’t have anybody in mind as a backup at first.
I’m a little sad to see this incarnation of the series end. It’s been one of my favorite comics.
