Let's Play Catch Up

This is going to be real quick, real short and real fun for me to do, because I wont be sat here for hours sorting out the finer details. Why? Because I just want to cover some stuff I've mentioned before along with  recent things I've been doing and also stuff you've probably already heard about. Let's jump in head first, shall we?

Television

Spider-Girl will not be appearing in the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon. Wait! Wait! That's not entirely accurate. May 'Mayday' Parker, the Spectacular, Amazing and Stunning Spider-Girl, daughter of the one true Spider-Man will not be appearing in this animated series during the third season, which is being marketed as Web-Warriors. Okay, yes it's called 'Web-Warriors' and not Web of Warriors or whatever the heck it was that I misinterpreted from that tiny pixelated logo from that tiny pixelated image that was slipped onto twitter. I screwed up. Anyway, back on point though, yeah. Mayday is a no-go, folks. Instead, the Spider-Girl appearing in the show will be Petra Parker, a gender-swapped analog of Peter Parker. This is a case of Spider-Man with boobs. Who'd of thought? I'm tempted to reference the Ultimate Universe comics version of the Clone Saga in which one of the teen Peter Parker clones is a female copy of him.

 Yeah. I'm really disappointed in this missed opportunity to represent Spider-Girl in other media. Alas. On the plus side, if things all go horribly wrong, Mayday's good name isn't besmirched for years to come.On a more positive note, I would like to congratulate Donald Glover (from the awesome comedy series Community) for being cast as the voice of the Miles Morales incarnation of Spider-Man. It's wonderful to see a fan ascend to playing their heroes. Next time though, cast him in a live-action film. He'd kick all sorts of butt.

In other, unrelated news I've begun watching Star Trek. Yes, I've finally crossed the threshold  I unconsciously avoided for years. It began sometime last year when a good friend selected what he identified as 'the good movies' to watch with me. It has since escalated. I've reached the forth disc of season one of The Original Series. It's better than I ever thought. It reminds me of classic Doctor Who in some respects, but with more shirt ripping and swagger. I'm gonna enjoy watching the rest of the series and who knows, maybe all the others?

Oh, and hey! Doctor Who is back on television. I'm very happy.

Film

So, Guardians of the Galaxy was a great fun film. My faith in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is completely reaffirmed. Captain America: The Winter Soldier was a really wonderful film, Amazing Spider-Man 2 was...it's hard for me to give it a fair judgement. In some regards it was a great Spider-Man film with great characters and awesome quip-age, something I've really enjoyed about the reboot. On the flip side, it was a terribly paced film with multiple plot lines all slapped together to make a movie without a clear focus and a lot of narrative dead ends. Also, nobody cares about Richard and Mary Parker! I both like and dislike it. Garfield and Stone are brilliant (as is Sally Field) but I want a better plot. I love Spider-Man and I really want a great Spidey film. Better still, one with this cast because Andrew Gafield is a really watchable and entertaining Spider-Man.

Comics

I'm going to be cutting back on some titles in the coming months and years. Not because I'm not enjoying the stuff I'm reading (I've already dropped those titles) but because I'm going to attempt to transition further into trade-waiting and trade paperback purchases rather than picking up individual issues which should save some money. For me, this is going to be difficult change. Wish me luck.

Spider-Verse has begun, and so far, so good. Granted I've only read Superior Spider-Man #32 but I really enjoyed seeing SpOck (Doctor Octopus in Spider-Man's body, dontcha know?) being stranded in 2099 -if only for a short time- and voyaging across worlds. I love time travel and dimension hopping stories, so this opening 'Edge of Spider-Verse' tie-in was right up my alley. The one thing I'm really worried about is the willy-nilly death of so many alternate reality Spidey's. Are we going to see the wonton deaths of...oh, I dunno--fan-favorite characters like Spider-Girl or her family?! I'm hopeful but also very nervous. Dan Slott does enjoy teasing the imminent deaths of characters...he's so gleeful about! I'm concerned here, people.

It was announced that Tom Defalco will be returning to write his co-creation Spider-Girl in a 10-page story for the Spider-Verse Team-Up mini series. While his story hasn't been solicited yet, I do wonder if he's going to be teamed up with Ron Frenz or Pat Olliffe on art duties. I'd be kind of offended if either hadn't been approached, as they contributed so much towards developing Mayday throughout her various series. The mini series is only 3-issues so I expect the Spider-Girl story in either December or January. Which, looking at things from a publishing perspective, inclines me to think Mayday herself will be alive through the Spider-Verse event until at least December. Yes, I'm calculating in my head based on nothing more than solicitations, the survivability of my favorite character in all of comics.


Until  Marvel utterly guts me by killing a character who forever changed and influenced my entire life, I remain

frogoat

It Figures: Spider-Girl Action Figures

Hasbro has recently announced there 2015 Marvel Infinite Legends Spider-Man wave and it includes a certain web-stunner. Check it out:

 Yeah, I think I'll be ordering this particular figure. It looks pretty decent, well articulated and the coloring isn't bad either (I'd have preferred a brighter color pallet, personally) but the one major draw back for me is the webshooters. Those are not accurate. At all. But, nevertheless, I'm happy with the figure and look forward to putting down my hard-earned cash for this toy.

 Now is as good a time as any to take a look at the previous few Spider-Girl figures released over the years. Shall we jump in? Lets!

 

This one is from 1999,  a part of the Toy Biz Marvel Famous Covers series.Based on what I can gather from the box-art and online, this was initially made exclusively available through Previews magazine. You are looking at my own figure in the images above, which was one of the hardest to find items I've ever had the misfortune to seek on eBay. It's a nice package, but I wonder what the figure would be like out of the box....

These four figures pictured above were (again) made available exclusively through Previews as part of the Marvel Comics 2 1st Appearances set in 1999. Above we have: (from left to right) American Dream, Spider-Girl, Stinger and Wild Thing. The other three in the set were relatively easy (if not inexpensive) to track down, but Spider-Girl herself was a challenge to even find, let alone ship to Australia. It took the might and ingenuity of my loving and tolerant partner to find and organize the purchase and (by way of two separate countries postal services re-routing the item) shipping of the Spider-Girl figure you see before you. Thanks, honey! One comment about this line of toys; Those breasts are huge! My goodness me! The articulation isn't great, but salvageable with the leg joints being particularly irritating when trying to get the figures to stand and pose. Regardless, having a complete set entirely composed of some of the MC2's female heroes impresses me and I always enjoy seeing them sitting on my shelf.

That's it! There hasn't been a legitimate Spider-Girl action figure released since 1999, so this upcoming release by Hasbro has me enthused to say the least. If you are interested, take a look around the web and see some of the great MC2 custom figures people have made. Very cool stuff out there.

Until we get a new set of super poseable MC2 figures including J2, Darkdevil and the Ladyhawk twins with a Build-a-Figure Dragon King, I remain

frogoat