Trouble (comics)

Trouble is a five-issue limited comic book series written by Mark Millar and illustrated by Terry and Rachel Dodson. It was published from 2003 to 2004 by Marvel Comics as the debut title for its relaunched Epic Comics imprint. The series follows the summer vacation of recent high school graduates May, Mary, Ben, and Richie, depicting subjects such as abstinence, teenage pregnancy, and abortion.

The series was heavily marketed as a potential new origin story for the superhero Spider-Man (Peter Parker), with much of the promotion centered around how the series' primary characters are heavily suggested to be younger versions of Spider-Man's family members Aunt May, Uncle Ben, and Richard and Mary Parker. This reflected the so-called "made-you-look" marketing strategy Marvel pursued in the early 2000s under executive vice president Bill Jemas, characterized by provocative editorial gimmicks that attracted substantial media coverage at little direct financial cost to the company.

Trouble was positioned by Marvel as an attempt to broaden its appeal among female readers by re-expanding into romance comics, a genre which enjoyed significant popularity in the mid-20th century, and to expand from the comic book store market into the more lucrative bookstore market. Though the first issue of Trouble went to a second printing in a significant reversal of Marvel's then-longstanding policy never to reprint comics, the series received generally negative reviews from critics, underperformed commercially, and was never formally incorporated into the broader Spider-Man canon.