Spider-Girl Vol 1 #3

Fun 'n' Games with the Fantastic Five
December 1998
Written by Tom DeFalco

Peter is up for an award directly from the Mayor, which is the topic of discussion at breakfast. May vows to be at the ceremony in time. At school, May is talking with Davida Kirby when Jimmy Yama breaks into the conversation. He asks May if she would like to go the new Fantastic Five showing at their base. Before May can answer, Moose Mansfield shows up with Brad Miller to mock him. However, Brad convinces Moose to back off and says how both groups of May's friends should go after school. They all do make it there after school and things seem to be going fine enough until a portal shows up in the middle of the room. Out of this dimensional doorway swaggers Spyral. It turns out he is looking for a Negative Zone device so he can get back to his right dimension. As May begins to engage him as Spider-Girl, the Fantastic Five shows up and jumps the gun by assuming she is working with Spyral. Before things can get straightened out, Spyral puts the public in danger and is able to get away as Reed Richards saves the crowd. May is also able to change back into her normal clothes before the Fantastic Five can capture her.

As she makes her way home, she is stopped by Phil Urich, he fathers partner as Midtown South Police Station. They have a conversation where he reveals to her that he once tried to be a superhero. May contemplates why he may have told her this a bit later as she watches for the Fantastic Five to go after Spyral. When they finally do, she follows them to the seedy warehouse 317 and assist them in their fight. Spyral is able to get the upper hand and May, along with Franklin Richards, are sent into another dimension, but with the Negative Zone technology. They try to fend of the creatures there as they wait for the rest of the team to bring them back, which they do. With Spyral in custody, The Thing and Johnny Storm want to hold May, but Franklin vouches for her, allowing her to leave with no questions asked. May hastily makes her way to her fathers ceremony, but she is already too late. The comic ends with Mary Jane and May walking away from each other in frustration.

This was a very well down issue, I believe. I like May's character more and more each issue and has a progression that I feel the other solo title, J2, is lacking. She is really starting to mature into the Power/Responsibility theme and she is becoming her father's daughter. The inclusion of the Fantastic Five didn't feel tacked on but felt like a natural part of the story. I am glad they are least gave a passing explanation as to what happened to Reed, because I didn't know that was him to begin with. It will be interesting in the next issue how May handles her parents, as well as Phil, who seems to know it is her who is the Spider-Girl.

Score: 4 / 5

Spider-Girl Vol 1 #2

Bedeviled?
November 1998
Written by Tom DeFalco

This issue begins a few weeks after the first one. May is fighting some thugs when Spider sense goes a little wonky as she notices a figure on a rooftop. Before she could find out who/what it is, she is attacked by Crazy Eight. May begins to worry because she didn't think she would be facing off against a real super villain. Still not up to superhero standards yet, May decides retreating would be her best shot. While recovering on the rooftops as the thugs get away, May is waylaid by Darkdevil, a strange new version of the Daredevil.

He does identify himself as a vigilante like May, but says the streets are not for the faint of heart and finds May lacking as a superhero. He then proceeds to attack her. He leaves her with an invitation to met him at Pier 87 the next night if she truly thinks herself ready to be a hero. Racing back home, she starts to feel more and more self-doubt. Peter and Mary Jane both lie awake in their room thinking about what is happening with May. The next morning, she overhears them talking about Peter mentioning something at their lunch date. At school, May's friend Jimmy is accosted by the jock Moose Mansfield right as Jimmy was about to ask May something. When Coach Flash Thompson breaks up the two, Jimmy just walks away. May goes to meet her father at Midtown South Police Department, but only finds Phil Urich instead. He tells her about the webbing he found at the scene from the first issue. May asks him not to tell her father and he agrees for some reason. May and Peter then go to an awkward and silent lunch together.

Back at MHS, Jimmy had agreed to fight Moose while May was gone. May takes matters into her own hands and shoves Moose into a locker so he will miss the fight. Jimmy becomes perturbed again, since he thinks May did something. That evening, May makes her way to Pier 87 to see that Darkdevil's test is actually Crazy Eight and his thugs from the previous evening. She takes him on and holds her own for awhile before he uses a sonic ball, which disrupts her equilibrium. May seems to retreat, which puts Crazy Eight at ease, but she comes from behind him and knocks him out. May gloats a bit over his unconscious body before the Darkdevil shows up, stating that he wants to save her from a funeral before leaving. The issue ends with May contemplating all of the complications no facing her, including having to fill her fathers tights and namesake.

This second issue of the series is a slight step up from the previous issue, but not by much. I like the direction it is taking in a bit of a more serious sense (unlike J2). May has some serious issues she has to address. I like the constant struggle she is in with how to talk with Peter. The only thing that irks me about the series being all about May is that she somehow is able to narrate about what Peter and Mary Jane are feeling. I think it wouldn't hurt the writers to give them their own narration, if only shortly/slightly. Though the character of Crazy Eight was a bit cheesy (having never read him before in the Marvel Universe), I do like the mystery surrounding the Darkdevil. So far, I like the direction this series is taking.

Score: 4 / 5

Spider-Girl Volume 1 Issue 1

Choices
October 1998
Written by Tom DeFalco

May "Mayday" Parker is still trying to reason with her new found powers and whether or not she should continue to use them in a superhero capacity. She begins to "research" Spider-Man and ends up talking to her fathers assistant, Phil Urich. Phil informs her the legacy of Spider-Man as some speculate, about how a freak accident lead to his creation and how he was first in entertainment until a burglar he let go killed someone close to him. Before long, Peter shows up and, as he, May, and Captain Ruiz are leaving the precinct, Peter and May feel their spider-sense tingling. A suspicious man begins to follow Peter and Captain Muiz, but May ambushes the man into an alley. Scurrying up a wall, she avoids letting the man see her as she tails him as he goes into a clothing store. She decides to leave the man be since he didn't commit any crime that she saw. Back at school, her friend Davida Kirby tries to get her to loosen up by going to the mall after basketball practice, but May is down because she starts to feel using her powers on the court is too much of an advantage to exploit.

At home over dinner, Peter talks about how he is working on a case with mobsters dealing with the fashion industry. May begins to think there may be a connection with the man since he went into a clothing store. Donning a make-shift black costume and using some web shooters she kept hidden, she takes to the city. Infiltrating the clothing store, she finds her man, Shaky, being grilled by his employer, the masked Mr. Nobody. She takes them on until Captain Ruiz and the police show up. May makes it out the window and Mr. Nobody is able to teleport out as well. Mr. Nobody then shows up in the prison cell of none other than the Kingpin to tell him about what happened. Back at the Parkers, May waits in her room, pretending to be asleep, for Peter to come and talk to her. He doesn't and over the next few days, she begins work on her very own costume as the issue comes to an end.

I like this one a bit more than the What If for some reason. I think maybe because the issue was able to work with the fact that it is a series now and doesn't have to contain itself to one issue. I like to see the inner struggle that May is going through, but sometimes the narration bugs me with using the term "You"; why can't she just say "I". I don't want to be her, I want her to be her. I think the Kingpin is certainly an interesting choice to have as her first baddie in the series, and can see Mr. Nobody being more interesting, especially if he is somebody from the Marvel past. Again, I like the art style a lot and actually enjoyed her first self-created costume; sort of a sexy black-and-white Spidey suit. Again, the conversations with Davida (changed from Roberta, I guess) feel weird with the "girlfriend" slang, since this is apparently fifteen years after the 1990's, when that speech was popular. Now, in 2007, you don't hear that kind of talk. Overall, an enjoyable first issue

Score: 4 / 5

What If ... ? - Vol 2 #105

Legacy ... In Black and White
February 1998

... What if Mary Jane had never lost the baby, and Spider-Man had a Spider-girl?

In normal Marvel continuity (Earth-616), Mary Jane had apparently miscarried May, though the baby was secretly smuggled by Alison Mongrain to Norman Osborn (see Clone Saga#Act 3 in the Books for more information). This issue of "What If ... ?" asks what may have happen had she not been taken.

Now at the age of fifteen, May "Mayday" Parker is the captain of her highschool girls basketball team at Midtown High School in Queens, New York (where her father had gone as well). Exhibiting some wowing abilities on the court, Mary Jane and Peter begin to worry she may have inherited some of Peter's Spider-Man abilities. As the congratulate her, a shadowy figure (the Green Goblin) looks on from the windows. May then blows off the jocks to hang out with her "nerdy" friends. Mary Jane and Peter walk home and Peter recounts how he no longer is Spider-Man because he had a large confrontation with Norman two years after May was born where Norman died and Peter lost the will to continue as Spider-Man. Without having to be Spider-Man, they never revealed to May who he had been. Elsewhere, May, Jimmy, and Courtney are attacked by the Green Goblin. He wants May to pass on the message to Peter that he will be waiting at the bridge the next night.

Peter decides to try to contact Normie Osborn, Norman's grandson. He gets through to Normie's stepfather who tells Peter he hasn't seen Normie since his mother grew ill. He relates this information to Mary Jane and May, in the process, overhears them talking about him being Spider-Man. The next day while Peter tries to get the help of first the Fantastic Five and then the Avengers, May starts to experiment with her new powers. She later confronts Mary Jane about the conversation from the previous night and MJ explains everything to her. That evening, Peter shows up at the bridge to face Normie, who is miffed Peter wasn't wearing his Spider-Man suit. Mary Jane shows up to try and reason with Normie, but May shows up as well, wearing Ben Reilly/Scarlet Spiders old suit. Fighting ensues and May is able to stop Normie with one of his own pumpkin bombs. Though he is about to then be hit, and possibly killed, by an oncoming truck, May saves him anyway. As the cops take him away, he raves on and on about Spider-Girl, but no one believes him. The Parkers then later burn Peter's old costumes and assorted gear, but an open-ended conclusion shows May's designs for her own suit an a titulating "The End?"

I found this to be a very enjoyable read, if somewhat sketchy at parts. There was a tacked on conversation between May and her friend Roberta that was a little cringe worthy ("Like forever, girlfriend!" ... ech). I like the look of Spider-Girl, but I felt that May looked a little like Jubliation Lee (who also made an appearance in this issue), but I do like how Peter looks now. I also like how they explained him giving up the mantle of Spider-Man as well as how he know works at a crime lab. I like the harder-edged art style as well.

Score: 4 / 5