Mayday's Eyes

 

With Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse bringing more attention to our favourite MC2-alumni with the introduction of Peter B Parker and Mary Jane Watson-Parker’s adorable baby daughter Mayday Parker, I thought now would be the perfect time to discuss Mayday’s Eyes.

 

One of the most notable talking points in the lead-up to Across the Spider-Verse was baby Mayday’s unique eye colour choice; heterochromia. This was seen in the officially released concept art which coincided with the first trailer’s debut online. With one iris blue and the other brown the design was distinctive, but having viewed the film, it did not appear to have been retained for the character as she appeared on screen. Unless I am mistaken, baby Mayday on the big screen had two blue eyes. Presumably in both cases the intent was to show Mayday inherited her eye colour from her parents, with Peter B having brown eyes and this Mary Jane having blue eyes in her brief appearances.

 

Now, let’s take look at the eye colour of the MC2’s May ‘Mayday’ Parker. While the comics have often been inconsistent with varying eye colours between issues, there is one colour that Mayday appears to have more consistently: blue. This is supported by a rather obscure source for official character information: Spider-Girl Battlebook: Streets of Fire. As I mentioned a very long time ago, with a cover date of November 1998, this was the first published source to provide officially approved physical characteristics for May ‘Mayday’ Parker.

 

However, when the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Women of Marvel 2005 gave us a full profile for Spider-Girl, Mayday was instead listed as having brown eyes. This was corrected to blue once again when the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z Hardcover Vol. 11 updated the profile information. It is worth noting that the Main Marvel Universe and MC2 Mary Jane is firmly established to have green eyes and similarly, Peter has hazel eyes.

 

Now, let us look at one other aspect of May ‘Mayday’ Parker’s eyes you may not have considered: poor vision. If we go all the way back to the beginning with What If #105, we do briefly glimpse May rocking glasses, presumably for some kind of vision impairment. Notably, this instance takes place shortly after Mayday’s powers first manifested during a basketball game and she does not continue to wear them in future appearances. As far as I can tell, the only other occasions of May donning eyewear are for the purposes of fashion, disguise, or safety such as Spider-Girl #42, #60, #65 and Amazing Spider-Girl #20.

 

What is interesting is May did not revert to using glasses when she lost her spider-powers following her battle with Killerwatt in Spider-Girl #25. Maybe Mayday only uses glasses in some circumstances or her spider-powers had already ‘healed’ any deficit in her eye-sight? It is not a certainty, though Peter has not returned to using his glasses on the occasions his own spider-powers have been lost.

 

Until I gain some perspective and take a long-sighted view on what I focus on, *eye* remain

 

frogoat

 

 

American Dream Handbook Correction

 

I'd like to preface this little post by saying I love the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe series and have a lot of respect for the hard work and dedication of the people who work on it's various entries. I'm also aware that there are time and space constraints and that no one is infallible and errors sometimes slip by unnoticed. So, with all that said, here's another really pointless correction I'd like to make.

So, in Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z Update #1 (published in 2010) American Dream received a full-page entry. Now, I could point out that Shannon Carter’s level of education in the entry is listed as ‘unrevealed,’ despite the fact that we know that she obtained her job as a tour guide ‘right out of high school,’ as I mentioned in my last post. Here's the original handbook entry for reference:

 

But, that’s not what I really wanted to address today. It’s the section that mentions the Dream Team. According to the handbook entry ‘Barton dubbed his trainees the “Dream Team,” and intended them to replace the Avengers, who had fallen in battle years ago but before they could do so, a new team of Avengers formed.’ Obviously, this explicitly identifies the former Avenger Hawkeye aka Clint Barton as the one who named his group of special students the Dream Team. But this is clearly not the case, as we see in American Dream #4, where Brandon Cross aka Freebooter is inspired by fellow student Shannon’s speech and gives the group the name.

 

 

There are obviously other minor issues in the write up, but mostly these come down to compressing information to fit on the page, and usually don’t explicitly provide factual errors.

 

Until I stop picking nits, I remain

 

frogoat