Amazing Fantasy #5
Amazing Fantasy vol. 2 #5 (2004) marks the in-story moment when Anya Corazon formally adopts the codename Araña — choosing it after her mother's maiden name, which also means 'spider' in Spanish — cementing the heroic identity she would carry for years. This made her one of Marvel's earliest prominent Latina leads in the modern era, a teenage girl of Puerto Rican and Mexican heritage whose spider-powers came not from a laboratory accident but from centuries-old mystical tradition, offering readers a meaningfully different origin within the Spider-Man family. The issue belongs to the six-part Amazing Fantasy run that Marvel used to test-market Araña before launching her solo title, directly demonstrating how publishers were beginning to invest in diverse younger heroes as headliners rather than sidekicks. Her evolution from this issue onward — eventually becoming Spider-Girl and a mainstay of Spider-Verse crossovers — shows how much narrative weight this early story arc carried.
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
The character was conceived by Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada as a Latina teenage counterpart to Spider-Man, developed alongside writer Fiona Avery and artist Mark Brooks, and is explicitly rooted in the Spider-Totem mythology J. Michael Straczynski had introduced in his concurrent Amazing Spider-Man run. Marvel revived the Amazing Fantasy banner — the same title that had launched Spider-Man in 1962 — specifically to introduce and road-test Araña, with the Spider-Man/Araña fandom wiki noting that the character was originally slated to be called Spider-Girl before editorial chose the Araña identity and the relaunched anthology format instead. The six-issue Amazing Fantasy arc ran from August 2004 to January 2005 under the Marvel Next imprint, and its completion fed directly into Araña's own twelve-issue solo series beginning in March 2005.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Amazing Fantasy vol. 2 #5 (2004) is indexed by the Marvel Database as the first issue in which Anya Corazon appears specifically as Araña — the issue where she formally chooses and adopts that codename.
- The name 'Araña' comes from her mother Sofia's maiden name and means 'spider' in Spanish, giving it both cultural and narrative significance within her origin story.
- The issue was written by Fiona Avery with art by Mark Brooks; the character was co-conceived by Marvel EIC Joe Quesada.
- Anya Corazon — of Puerto Rican and Mexican heritage — is one of Marvel's earliest prominent Latina superhero leads of the modern era, specifically designed to bring ethnic diversity to the Spider-Man extended family.
- Her powers originate from a mystical ritual performed by mage Miguel Legar of the 900-year-old Spider Society, tying her directly to the Spider-Totem mythology J. Michael Straczynski introduced in his Amazing Spider-Man run.
- The 2004 Amazing Fantasy series (issues #1–6) was published under the Marvel Next imprint and served as a deliberate market test before Araña's twelve-issue solo series, Araña: The Heart of the Spider, launched in March 2005.
- The entire Amazing Fantasy vol. 2 #1–6 arc — including this issue — was collected in the trade paperback Araña Vol. 1: Heart of the Spider.
- Araña later appeared in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) and made her live-action debut portrayed by Isabela Merced in Sony's Madame Web (2024), reflecting the lasting reach of the character introduced in this run.