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

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