Halloween: Spider-Girl's Birthday

 

Well, Halloween is upon us once more and that means it is time to wish May ‘Mayday’ Parker aka Spider-Girl a Happy Birthday! Or is it? Let’s take a look at the situation.

 

At the commencement of the now legendary (and infamous) Clone Saga of the 90’s Peter and Mary Jane Parker learn they are going to have a baby and indeed, Mary Jane is pregnant throughout the entirety of the Saga. These same events play out in the MC2's past also, as seen in Spider-Girl #48-#49. Mary Jane apparently goes into a particularly painful and unusual labor after her food is spiked by Alison Mongrain (Sensational Spider-Man #11).

 

Mary Jane is taken to hospital where she learns from a Doctor Folsome that her regular doctor is not available. In the birthing suite, Mary Jane asks if her baby is breathing and is told by Folsome ‘everything is going exactly as planned’ as an unseen Norman Osborn watches on. Following an agonising delivery, Mary Jane again asks Folsome ‘why isn’t she crying’ before breaking down in tears. The doctor offers his condolences, while Mongrain (disguised as a nurse) wheels an unidentified ‘package’ to her car. Alison meets up with her employer at the docks where she is told she is going to Europe with a sizable bonus as she boards a yacht. Mongrain’s employer tells her she can call him by his real name: Norman Osborn (Amazing Spider-Man #418, Spider-Girl #48). Unbeknownst to both of them, Kaine will track down Mongrain.

 

 

All these events transpire across the day and through the night of October 31^st, Halloween. Thus, May ‘Mayday’ Parker was born on October 31^st in both the Main Marvel Universe and the MC2. So why is her birthday celebrated well after Christmas (Spider-Girl #54) in Spider-Girl #67? Well, this is a question I worked on answering many years ago now with good friend and excellent Spider-Man scholar Big Al. Here is an extract of our efforts from his own blog on Tumblr:

 

 

It is simply not logical that practically a whole year elapses between the Season of the Serpent and Marked for Death arcs, especially given how Mayday was clearly stated to be fifteen at the start of the series.

Whilst we don’t know for sure when Mayday celebrates her birthday in contrast to when Season of the Serpent happens (the latter arc itself spanning an uncertain amount of time itself) it wouldn’t be unreasonable to estimate that at most we’re talking late February maybe early March, but even that is a fairly extreme guess. But no way is it October.

Myself and Frogoat from this fair site in discussing this topic ultimately resolved to take our conundrum to the sources themselves and so Frogoat kindly asked Mr. Tom DeFalco and Mr Ron Frenz about the discrepancy at hand. Here is what Mr. Frenz had to say on the matter:

‘May’s birthday is considered to be October 31st.(As celebrated by and on this very message board!)Any story(seeming)inconsistency that suggests otherwise has been officially designated a SNAFU by no-less a legendary figure as Mr.Tom DeFalco himself.

 

May’s “Special Day” as shown, I believe, in our tenth-anniversary issue is a separate celebration of the day May was returned to her loving Parents by “Uncle Kaine.“

 

Oh, and shame on you for not knowing all of this. Shame, I say. ;D

 

Regards,

Ron.’

 

Well there you have it. Just a simple mistake.

But this wouldn’t be Continuity Confusion if we just left it there right?

Without starting any heated debates about continuity, what’s on the page vs. authorial intent or anything like that for the sake of argument let’s agree that Season of the Serpent happened at Christmas and that Mayday’s birthday occurred shortly thereafter.

How could this possibly in-universe make any kind of sense if we know for a fact that Mayday’s birthday falls on October 31^st?

 

 

So now that we have a co-creator’s comment, we must work out a No-Prize explanation for why Mayday’s birthday is celebrated months later. The answer is surprisingly simple, given that officially, baby May Parker was presumably declared deceased on October 31^st. We also know that months passed where Alison Mongrain travelled Europe in a yacht with the newborn May, while Peter and Mary Jane mourned their lost baby (Spider-Girl #48-#49). So, here is the most explanation Big Al and myself arrived at, again quoted from his post:

 

So, why not try this on for size. Given how she was presumed stillborn it is possible that Mayday was not given a birth certificate on October 31^st and may even have lacked one entirely during her abduction. There would however have been a record of her death.

This would’ve created a great deal of legal hassle for Peter, MJ and their lawyers not least because of them having to explain the circumstances of May’s abduction and retrieval. But the point is that they would have had to more than likely fill out an all-new birth certificate and legal records. My proposition is that when they did that Peter and MJ essentially assigned Mayday a different date as her birthday other than October 31. And if you think about it this makes a certain amount of sense emotionally speaking as October 31 would be a day that would hold very painful memories for Peter and MJ. So why not choose to celebrate the life of their daughter on a day free from the taint of any sad recollections?

 

Thanks to Big Al and to my fellow MC2 fanatic arias-98105 for their immense help and continual tolerance of my abysmal memory. With all that out of the way, we can assume that the Parker Family celebrate Mayday’s birthday sometime at least a few months after her actual birth, a good guess being around late February at the earliest. Gee, I bet that was a paperwork nightmare…Wait does that mean May's a probably a few months older than she thinks?!

 

Happy Birthday, May ‘Mayday’ Parker and Rest in Peace Ben Reilly. Have a good Halloween, everyone!

 

Until I stop rehashing old points of interest and plucking at threads, I remain

 

frogoat

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kaine's Costume

 

Kaine is one of those characters I could probably talk about a lot more. Specifically, I find his MC2 incarnation fascinating for various reasons. Today I wanted to take a look at something I’ve always found under utilized in his original Main Marvel Universe and only touched upon lightly in the MC2: Kaine’s weird costume during the Clone Saga.

I’ll let writer and editor Glen Greenberg explain Kaine’s suit in his own words from the brilliant Life of Reilly Part 9 (which can be found here and here):  

And here's a few things you probably didn't know about Kaine. First, that weird costume of his was actually a life-support outfit that stabilized the debilitating effects of his cellular degeneration. Kaine lived in constant pain, and that would only get worse as time went on, but the outfit slowed down the degeneration and prolonged his life. That's why Kaine wore the costume in most of his modern-day appearances, and why he didn't have it in the LOST YEARS limited series, which took place years earlier.

 

Glen continues:

 

Ironically enough, as Mark Bernardo - even to this day - has never failed to point out, NONE of the Spider-writers ever managed to work any of this information into the actual stories! Mark and I both felt that these were some of the most interesting aspects about Kaine - but as it turned out, the people in our little group would be the only ones who ever knew about them!

So, the writers had a logical explanation worked out for why Kaine was wearing the suit during the present-day parts of the Clone Saga and not the flashbacks seen years earlier in the Lost Years mini-series, this information apparently never made it’s way into the stories that were published at the time.

 

Now in both the Main Marvel Universe and the MC2-niverse we see Kaine on the loose shortly after the infant Mayday Parker is kidnapped by agents of Norman Osborn, leading to him pursuing Alison Mongrain and becoming directly involved in the events that follow. One area where things differ is after his apparent escape from prison in the Main Marvel Universe, Kaine is still somehow rocking his life-support suit that slows his clone degeneration. How he got access to it is unclear and makes little sense (Amazing Spider-Man #435).  Meanwhile what we see in the MC2 around the same time seems somewhat more likely: Kaine is wearing plain civilian clothes which evoke his attire during the events of Spider-Man: The Lost Years, the kind of thing he would have easy access to while on the run from authorities and trying to remain incognito (Spider-Girl #48-#49 and Amazing Spider-Girl #25).

It's only later on in the MC2’s history, during the time a young Reilly Tyne and later the body of the deceased Matt Murdock aka Daredevil are brought to Kaine’s secret laboratory, that we see Kaine rocking a new shiny metallic suit or armour (as seen in flashbacks from Darkdevil #1-#3). This is appears to be the same design in which he made his MC2 debut in Spider-Girl #12 and would continue to wear for the next few issues until his imprisonment at the end of Spider-Girl #17. Subsequently Kaine is shown in prison without this metallic suit and upon his release, only returning to it when he reappeared in the pages of Spider-Girl once more with Spider-Girl #45-#47, #48-49. From this point on, Kaine is seen alternating between either civilian clothing, his metallic suit, or a combination of the two. This brings us to the next point.

 

Kaine no longer seems to require his regeneration suit, a fact made clear in the Darkdevil mini-series not just through his prison stay without any special suit, but in the aforementioned flashbacks. Specifically, one which mentions Kaine mastered ‘arcane skills’ years earlier to prevent his degeneration. This apparently involved acting as a servant to the living spirit of vengeance known as Zarathos, and a mention by the spirit implies Kaine still suffers physical torment. However, Kaine notes in Spider-Girl #14 that after years of constant agony, his nerve endings simply stopped functioning, suggesting he can no longer feel anything.

 

This raises the question of why Kaine wears the metallic suit at all if he doesn’t have to rely on one to stave off his cellular degeneration and no longer seems to experience pain? We don’t have a definitive answer, but I have a theory that’s quite straightforward and deceptively simple: If Kaine can’t feel pain and has already been ravaged for years prior by his imperfectly cloned cells degenerating, he’s far more vulnerable to severe injury. Kaine has experienced severe physical trauma throughout his years and would probably have died years ago had he not used arcane methods to cheat death. Kaine remains mortal and is now at an advanced physical age, hence why he often relies on his metallic suit for protection: should he sustain a life-threatening injury, he would not even feel it and may not realize until it is too late.

 

Kaine wears the metallic suit less as time goes on, eventually wearing civilian clothing exclusively in his later appearances in Amazing Spider-Girl and beyond. While it does humanise him, it also leaves him vulnerable. Perhaps that is by choice? Anyway, let me know what you think or if you have any alternative suggestions. Kaine is such a great character and ripe with such potential for future stories should the MC2 ever make comeback.

 

Until I figure out Kaine’s whole Caribbean detour thing, I remain

 

frogoat

The Smythe Family Tree

One of my favourite aspects of the MC2 universe is the multi-generational characters and legacies that crop up. It's one of the reasons I began this off-and-on-again series of MC2 Family Trees and today's post presents another fun example. The Smythe Family Tree will detail the family of genius creators responsible for the various Spider-Slayer robots!

To begin with, we have Spencer Smythe who first appeared in my all-time favourite Stan Lee/Steve Ditko issue, Amazing Spider-Man #25. In his first appearance, Spencer is only referred to as Smythe and his robot has not yet been dubbed a 'Spider-Slayer' (unless we accept the altered events of Mayday's time travel in Spider-Girl #10 and #11 where it is explicitly referred to as such...). It's also worth noting that poor Spencer was perfectly polite, respectable and in no way obsessed with catching and killing the wallcrawler at this point. No, here he's just a scientist trying to sell his product and he would remain interested in other endeavours when he next appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #28, before being assaulted and robbed by his former assistant, Mark Raxton moments before he becomes the Molten Man using Spencer's own newly created alloy.

After this, Spencer would make further attempts to capture Spider-Man using his newly-dubbed Spider-Slayers by convincing J Jonah Jameson to fund his efforts (Amazing Spider-Man #58). Growing more obsessed with exacting revenge on the web-head, Spencer abused his position as scientific advisor to enact a plot to use Jameson while destroying Spider-Man in the process (Amazing Spider-Man #105-#107). Foiled, Spencer turned his focus solely on killing Spider-Man, this time also building robotic replicas of other villains only to once again be defeated (Amazing Spider-Man #150).

Learning that he was dying as a result of exposure to the radioactive materials he used in his Spider-Slayers, Spencer set about enacting his revenge on both J Jonah Jameson and Spider-Man. Operating from the shadows and becoming increasingly unhinged, Smythe paid various villains to aid him in his master scheme, eventually orchestrating the apparent death of Jonah's son, John Jameson. With Jonah blaming Spider-Man, Smythe was once again approached by Jameson seeking a new Spider-Slayer. However, Spencer captured Jonah and following a battle with his latest Spider-Slayer, shackled Spider-Man and Jameson together with a bomb set to detonate in 24 hours. While Spider-Man and Jameson would eventually free themselves, Spencer would not live long enough to witness his final failure, dying beforehand (Amazing Spider-Man #186-#192).

In Amazing Spider-Man Annual #19 we meet Alistaire Alphonso Smythe, the son of Spencer Smythe. In his first appearance Alistaire is an overweight man who worked for the Kingpin until he is promptly fired. We also learn that Spencer Smythe left Alistaire and his mother, only visiting occasionally and ignoring Alistaire, in his obsession talking only of destroying Spider-Man. Due to some silly shenanigans, Alistaire captures Mary Jane and her Aunt Anna, mistakenly believing MJ is Spider-Man until his flying saucer-style Spider-Slayer crashes into powerlines.

 

 When next we see Alistaire, the injuries sustained during his crash have left him confined to a wheelchair with damage to his nervous system, only able to sustain himself via intravenous injections which likely contributed to his significant weight loss. Tracking Mary Jane down in his new Spider-Slayer an attempt to find the true identity of Spider-Man, Alistaire eventually followed her to Pittsburgh. There he was defeated again thanks to the combined efforts of Mary Jane and an enraged Spider-Man  who threatened Smythe not to harm MJ or other innocents again. (Amazing Spider-Man 291-#292).

Sent to an asylum, Alistaire eventually escaped with a group of fellow intelligent patients, keeping them as a work force to build a series of Spider-Slayers. During this time, Smythe developed a bio-organic carapace which repaired and enhanced his body, granting him super-human abilities. Dubbing himself the 'Ultimate Spider-Slayer,' Alistaire sent the various robots one after the other in a wave of attacks on Spider-Man until he was eventually found and defeated by the hero (Amazing Spider-Man #367-#373). 

Alistaire would next appear during the Clone Saga in two connected storylines, Virtual Mortality and CyberWar wherein he allies himself with prospective crime boss Jason Tso against Carolyn Trainer aka Doctor Octopus. Seeking specific microchips to complete and improve his new Cyber-Slayers, Smythe eventually ends up being out played by Trainer when she takes possession of the master control for the constructs following Alistaire's completion of the device, knocking him out in the process (Amazing Scarlet Spider #1, Scarlet Spider #1-#2, Spectacular Scarlet Spider #1-2, Web of Scarlet Spider #2).

That's the last time we see Alistaire before the MC2 diverges from the Main Marvel Universe, but it's not the last time a Smythe plagues the Parker family over in the pages of Spider-Girl. Staci Smythe makes her first appearance as an unnamed store clerk in the Spider Shoppe when May first discovers the place in Spider-Girl #45. Cleverly and subtly, Staci makes small appearances in almost all later issues featuring the Spider Shoppe, including Spider-Girl #73 and Spider-Girl #75 where Mayday purchases her original black suit.

We learn far more about Staci Smythe in Spider-Girl #91 when she is revealed as the costumed villain La Fantome. Staci Smythe desired to be a famous fashion designer and attended fashion college. While there she was recruited by Mary Jane Parker to work at the Spider Shoppe upon it's opening, allowing her to pay for her education. Recognizing Staci's surname, Mary Jane had hoped to give the young woman a break from the stigma of her family's name, which Staci evidently greatly appreciated.

Disguised as La Fantome, Staci began making attacks on Daniel Kingsley at his Spider-Women themed fashion show and warehouse office as revenge for his profiting from idea's stolen from the Spider Shoppe. Staci also organized a rally in support of the Spider Shoppe which attracted the police, prompting her to don her La Fantome guise once more. However, La Fantome undone when her fellow rally attendee's (including Spider Shoppe secret-owner Mary Jane Parker and Spider-Girl herself, May Parker) joined forces to surround her wearing various spider-costumes allowing Spider-Girl the opportunity to easily apprehend and unmask her. 

A few things before I wrap this up: While Mary Jane mentions Staci's uncle made Spider-Slayers and was an old enemy of Spider-Man, we don't learn whether the uncle in question was Spencer or Alistaire. For the purposes of my Smythe Family Tree, I've concluded this refers to Spencer, as Alistaire never mentions having any siblings when discussing his childhood. The only argument I have to refute this is Alistaire is far more familiar to Mary Jane, but there's nothing concrete to support either argument, so I've assumed Staci's family name came from an unseen sibling of Spencer Smythe. 

Speaking of names, many online sources and even comic writers have spelt Alistaire Smythe incorrectly as 'Alistair' and the same is also true for Staci Smythe, with some online spelling it 'Stacy'. Perhaps it's a family tradition upheld by Spencer and his sibling to spell their children's names oddly?

I'd also like to briefly point out that Mary Jane has strong connections to all three of the Smythe's first named appearances. Spencer Smythe first appears in Amazing Spider-Man #25 which is also the first on-panel appearance of Mary Jane Watson (albeit with her face obscured). Alistaire Smythe first appears in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #19 wherein he kidnaps Mary Jane and deludes himself into believe she is Spider-Man. Staci Smythe first appears in Spider-Girl #45 working in the Spider Shoppe, which is owned by Mary Jane as confirmed in Staci's first named appearance Spider-Girl #91. There's just something about her, isn't there?

While I don't touch on it much here, long ago I made an entire post about Spider-Girl #10-#11 which heavily features Spencer Smythe and his first Spider-Slayer. Check it out here. I've also made posts before discussing the connection between La Fantome's name and appearance with that of the Fifth Avenue Phantom from the 1967 Spider-Man animated series and another post detailing how La Fantome connects the Incredibles to the MC2, so I won't go into detail about it here. On the other hand I can't help but mention my love for the Spider-Man: The Animated Series adaption which first introduced me to Spencer and Alistaire Smythe! I still hear Alistaire's voice from the show whenever I read him in the comics.

Until I manage to convince Jameson to buy my latest killer robot, I remain

frogoat