Sunday, 19 June 2022

Spider-Girl's First Web-Shooters

I haven’t done a May ‘Mayday’ Parker focused post in a while and thanks to some recent difficulties with other projects I’ve been trying to complete, I figured I should try and shine some light on everyone’s favourite arachnid hero of the MC2, the Stunning Spider-Girl. So, for this post I wanted to start with something from May’s first appearance: Spider-Girl’s First Web-shooters.

 


The MC2’s primary protagonist Spider-Girl makes her debut in the pages of What If #105, where we first witness May suit up in a familiar webbed costume which is stated to belong to her ‘Uncle Ben’ aka Ben Reilly, the Sensational Spider-Man. It’s this costume’s web-shooters I want to focus on, as presumably they are a pair of Ben’s own design.

 



Here’s Mayday as Spider-Girl swinging into action for the first time against Normie Osborn’s Green Goblin, where she uses a double-tap to first a web-line. In fact, the web-shooters play a key part in the battle’s climax. However, at the story’s conclusion, the Parker family have an impromptu ceremony in their backyard, seemingly burning both Ben’s Spider-Man costume and web-shooters. Or did they?





In Spider-Girl #1 -which takes place shortly after the events of What If #105- we learn May secretly stashed a pair of web-shooters and a handful of web-cartridges. So, are these Ben’s web-shooters? Initially I was going to rely on visual design or details to discern the truth. We have a ton of information about how both Ben and Peter’s web-shooters are designed, look and work thanks to the wonderful technical art of Eliot R. Brown from both the Jackal Files and the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z Vol. 9.



 








 Unfortunately, there was absolutely no artistic design consistency during the Clone Saga and nor should there be, really. So, do May’s original web-shooters look the same as Ben’s own web-shooter design from that era? Sure, sometimes, sometimes not, it really depends on who was drawing them back then and if that’s consistent with how Pat Olliffe draws them in the Spider-Girl series. With that option gone, what else can we use to determine if May is wearing a set of Peter’s or Ben’s web-shooters?



 




Jumping ahead to Spider-Girl #17, we have the now-classic return of Spider-Man when Peter confiscates the web-shooters Mayday has been using in an attempt to prevent her from confronting Kaine. Peter explicitly states ‘Taking your costume away doesn’t work, but those web-shooters belong to me. And I want them back!


 








Let’s jump back a bit now for some more context: Peter took May’s costume away in Spider-Girl #5 and though she briefly retrieves it to stop Spider-Venom she remains without her costume and web-shooters until Mary Jane returns them to her in Spider-Girl #7. All evidence seems to strongly indicate that Peter not only confiscated the only existing web-shooters in the Parker home, but also uses these same web-shooters when he suits up in the aforementioned Spider-Girl #17, during which he symbolically and literally hands them down to May.


 






That was the long answer, here’s the short version: it appears that if May was indeed originally using Ben Reilly’s own web-shooters they were really destroyed in What If #105. Curious about if I had this straight, I reached out to Ron Frenz for his thoughts on the matter and he had this to say:

Honest answer: I never knew there was any difference between Pete and Ben’s web-shooters. Having said that, Mayday used Ben’s web-shooters as Pete’s were always available to him whenever he decided to climb into the monkey suit.

 

With all this in mind, my personal interpretation is that after What If #105 Mayday can only have gained her own set of web-shooters after the events of Spider-Girl #17. Prior to this, she only had access to the one pair which Peter identified as his own. After this Peter either made May a new set based on Ben’s or modified his own design to reflect his brother’s additions. It’s also possible Peter had a set of Ben’s web-shooters stashed someplace May was unaware of, but this doesn’t seem likely without supporting evidence.


A huge thank you to Ron Frenz for his input and to arias-98105 for always throwing me a helping hand when I need it. Don’t dispose of pressurized metallic objects in fires, kids.

 

Until I figure out what the composition of artificial web-fluid actually is and retire a billionaire, I remain

 

frogoat

 

 


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