A-Next #3
A-Next #3 earns its place in the MC2 record books for two interconnected revelations: it is the issue in which Mainframe — Tony Stark's self-aware AI inhabiting Iron Man-style armor — is first revealed to be an android, a disclosure that reframes the character's entire role on the team and deepens the series' meditation on legacy and identity. The issue also introduces Doc Magus (Dormagus), the Earth-982 universe's new Sorcerer Supreme, a figure who immediately complicates the young Avengers' world by pitting them against the classic Defenders line-up of Doctor Strange, the Hulk, and the Sub-Mariner. That cross-generational clash — elder Marvel icons tested against their successors just three issues into the run — is exactly the kind of thematic heavy-lifting Tom DeFalco built the MC2 imprint to explore, asking what the original heroes' legacies are really worth when the next generation has to earn their own credibility against the very people who inspired them.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
A-Next was one of three launch titles for Marvel's MC2 imprint in late 1998, a line conceived by writer Tom DeFalco and artist Ron Frenz during Marvel's difficult post-bankruptcy recovery period. The series grew directly out of the alternate-future world DeFalco and Frenz had sketched in What If? #105, and the creative team — DeFalco as writer/editor, Frenz on pencils, and Brett Breeding inking — carried their classic, Romita Sr.-influenced visual sensibility across the whole twelve-issue run. Issue #3, released on October 21, 1998 with a December 1998 cover date, was produced on that same tight monthly schedule alongside companion titles Spider-Girl and J2, and its story is explicitly designed to cross over with J2 #3, which reprints the J2-versus-Hulk fight in its entirety.
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- Title/story: 'Down 'n' Dirty With the Defenders' — released October 21, 1998, cover-dated December 1998, published by Marvel under the MC2 imprint.
- First appearance of Doc Magus (Dormagus), the Earth-982 Sorcerer Supreme, who recruits the young Avengers to oppose Doctor Strange's reformed Defenders.
- Mainframe is first revealed to be an android in this issue — a pivotal character disclosure that recontextualizes his role as the team's organizer and de facto leader.
- The cover is a deliberate homage to the cover of Avengers #3 (1963), continuing the MC2 series' pattern of honoring the original Avengers' publishing milestones.
- Story crosses over with J2 #3, which reprints the J2-versus-Hulk battle sequence in its entirety, making the two issues companion reads.
- Creators: written by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz; pencils by Ron Frenz; inks by Brett Breeding; colors by Bob Sharen; letters by Jim Novak; edited by Tom DeFalco with Bob Harras as Editor-in-Chief.
- The issue also features an early in-story appearance of Shannon Carter (the future American Dream) in her civilian role as Avengers Mansion tour guide, weeks before her costumed debut in A-Next #4.
- A Newsstand Edition variant of this issue exists alongside the Direct Edition.
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