There really should have been policy that no one with his own book should have any stories in MCP. Instead, it is filled with them. I suspect many of these are probably inventory filler, failed limited series that didn't get a greenlight, or annual back ups.

There are so many secondary characters with potential that could be given a chance to shine. The book might also have been improved if they had less stories per issue. I think the default was 4?

But there are two logical reasons why MCP did feature guys with their own titles: they'd help sell the mag to fans who don't care about, say, Ultra-Man. Using the books' own logos in big type on the covers, with the MCP logo quite small, even tricked me into thinking that some issues featuring a Excalibur were actually Excalibur issues. (Obviously, I found out when I opened the mag.) just as importantly perhaps, this gave Marvel's editors and neophyte writers a chance to write characters who were otherwise creatively spoken for, which was probably part of the mag's internal reason for existing. Marvel Fanfare was supposed to do that too, I guess, but at this point MF is just doing 32-page versions of filler stories that would have taken 8 pages in MCP.

Neither of these are good creative reasons, of course, although with higher quality control the use of characters featured elsewhere need not have been much if a problem.

In a way, MCP is as much a harbinger of '90s suckiness as the advent of Rob Liefeld. Marvel's '90s writers put in early appearances in this series: Kavanagh, Harras, Mackie, Lobdell. Notably, they're all moonlighting Marvel editors, except Lobdell, who must have been friends with an editorial staffer. (Kavanagh? Maybe Harras?)

MCP had some excellent wraparound covers.
Just thought I'd mention that while everyone's picking on it!

Cullen - unfortunately, the covers may have been the best things about these issues - pretty packaging, somewhat mediocre to lousy content IMO. I bought them hoping they would have some potential impact on the main series at some point. My bad :)

Did Daredevil take steroids in that first scan? I've never seen him so pumped up. If that's how he looked, it's no wonder Turk threw himself through the window. Thankfully, the steroids wore off by the next scan.

I bought a couple of MCPs and found them much less satisfying than Solo Avengers. I think the reason that MCP sold well was entirely due to Wolverine fans buying anything with their hero in it, no matter who wrote it or the quality. True marvel zombie style. Its been demonstrated that it never matters who writes Wolvie, he still sells.
Solo Avengers at least tried to spotlight obscure characters.

Historical Significance: Possibly the start of the dreaded "Assistant-Editor-as-Writer" phase at Marvel.

Using only secondary characters without their own book is a nice idea, but every issue of this series I have is usually only readable for Wolverine story.

The idea is really sound if you think about it: a book for characters who could need the boost or more to them. The problem, of course, is "would it sell on it's own"? Obviously the answer is no, which unfortunately leads to the need of a headliner in order to at least get eyes interested and wallets opened for a book like this. Obviously, giving Wolverine another book is not something we would want, but it sort of gets the idea across: lets create a long-term story of interest, then people could read that, check out the other characters and maybe we could find something that clicks, both with readers or a character who has more potential than given out front. Of course you still need quality to make these other characters stand out; and since most didn't or just didn't have enough pages to, thus the book's failing.