Since her creation in 2014, Spider-Gwen has been one of Marvel’s hottest properties, quickly spinning off into her own solo series with a string of new merchandise following closely behind. Jason Latour, Robbi Rodriguez and Rico Renzi took a one-off idea and turned it into a brand new franchise for Marvel, and a lot of the success comes down to Spider-Gwen’s awesome costume, designed by Rodriguez. However, this past weekend at C2E2, Rodriguez announced that he plans to step away from comics.
https://twitter.com/RobbiRodriguez/status/711755977985564672
In a discussion with Newsarama over the weekend, Rodriguez confirmed that following the upcoming “Spider-Women” crossover with Spider-Woman and Silk, the Spider-Gwen team will focus on Earth-65’s Venom in a new arc appropriately titled “Gwenom,” and thereafter he will retire from comics.
Spider-Gwen’s universe continues to grow, and we’ve already seen versions of The Vulture, The Kingpin, Daredevil, The Punisher and Captain America, so introducing Venom as Rodriguez’s swan song seems like a fitting and suitable goodbye to the book and its fans. Rodriguez will be greatly missed, and it will be interesting to see if Marvel is able to fill his shoes. His style, along with Renzi’s colors, have defined the look of Spider-Gwen’s world since the beginning.
Robbi Rodriguez says he’s open to coming back to comics every now and then, so this isn’t necessarily a final goodbye to the industry, but it may well mark the end of his relationship with work-for-hire comics.
