Showing posts with label Spider-Woman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spider-Woman. Show all posts

Sunday 13 May 2018

MC2 Family Trees Master Post

My own self-imposed rule of posting at least once a week hasn't gone to plan due to very limited free time. I'd prefer to put out something rather than nothing but with no time to spare, I figure a full list of my MC2 Family Trees would have to suffice for now. There will be more of these family trees in future, including a few updates to previous entries.

The Yama Family Tree

The Mansfield Family Tree

The Kirby Family Tree

The Hardy/Thompson Family Tree

The Xavier-Marko Family Tree

The Duran Family Tree

The DeSantos Family Tree

The Crazy/Face Family Tree

The Jameson Family Tree

The Carter Family Tree

The Masterson Family Tree

The Lang Family Tree

The Drew Family Tree

The Morgan Family Tree

The Robertson Family Tree

The Dillon Family Tree

The Logan Family Tree

The Forest Family Tree

The Wyngarde Family Tree

The Wakandan Royal Family Tree

The Lang Family Tree *Updated*

The Bryce-Jones Family Tree

The Rambeau-Freeman Family Tree

The Harkness Family Tree

The Brady Family Tree

The Lu Family Tree

That's all of the Family Trees to date. If there are any specific MC2 Family Tree's you'd like to see, please don't hesitate to ask. I'd love some feedback. Even if you think I've got something wrong, tell me!

Until I find more time to put out something more consequential, I remain

frogoat






Monday 2 October 2017

The Drew Family Tree

This time around I thought I'd shine a little 'spotlight' on the first Spider-Woman, Jessica Drew and her family. The best part about doing these little projects is it gives me the chance to read and discover new facets of the Marvel Universe. In delving into the family history of Jessica Drew, I discovered that her mother and father (Meriem and Jonathan Drew) are deeply entrenched in other areas of Marvel lore.



Jessica first obtains her powers as a result of exposure to radiation when she was a child living with her parents on Wundagore Mountain. The reason her parents were there? Jonathan Drew was a scientist specializing in arthropods who partnered with the man who would become the High Evolutionary. Together, they moved to the nation of Transia onto land inherited by Meriem Drew from her maternal Uncle and, after discovering a vast deposit of Uranium, build a futuristic scientific laboratory to further their research. When Jessica is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation, she is placed into cryogenic stasis and injected with a serum derived from Jonathan's spider research.

Oh, and then Meriem is killed by a Werewolf (who just so happens to be the father of Jack Russell) and Jonathan eventually becomes possessed by the sorcerer Magnus due to exposure to the Elder God Chthon before later becoming involved with a group called the Pyrotechnics who brainwashed and later killed him on the orders of a Congressmen. So yeah, pretty well connected, and that's not even mentioning Jessica's connection to the Puppet Master. Seriously, look into it.

On the MC2 side of things, it appears that following a loss of her powers, Jessica pursued her private investigator career before marrying an old boyfriend (apparently Gerald 'Jerry' Hunt, a S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent she encountered early in her costumed days). Two years later, Jess gave birth to her son Gerald 'Gerry' Drew who was soon diagnosed with a rare and apparently fatal blood disease. Hunt blamed Jessica for Gerry's condition and abandoned his family but Jessica never gave up on her son, using her own father's old research to recreate the process that saved her I hopes of saving Gerry.

The process was painful and long, so to distract Gerry, Jessica would entertain him with stories of various heroes including Spider-Man, who would become Gerry's favourite. Gerry emerged from the treatment with spider-powers and become obsessed with replicating his hero Spider-Man. Despite giving him superhuman abilities, the process had not cured him of his blood disease and Gerry was still, in fact, dying.

A few tidbits that don't really fit anywhere: Jessica's mother's name is spelt various different ways including Meriem, Merriam and Miriam, sometimes in the same story. I've gone with Meriem for the family tree, as that is the original spelling from Spider-Woman #1. Also, you may have noticed I mention that Meriem inherited land from her maternal Uncle, despite not including him in the Family Tree above. I am aware. Curiously, there is a slight discrepancy regarding the timeline of events surrounding when Jerry Hunt abandoned his family, as he is seen in a recounting of Gerry's treatment, but absent in another telling. Considering both are told by people who either weren't present (Julia Carpenter) or were too young to remember (Gerry himself), it's unclear whether Jerry left before or after his son began the experimental treatment. Spider-Girl #42 gives Gerry his full first name of Gerald and also mentions that his surname was legally changed after his mother  divorced his father. So, Gerry was formerly Gerald Hunt, after his father.

Until I find a more succinct and streamlined method of pawing through Marvel Minutia, I remain

frogoat


Thursday 9 July 2015

Mayday as Spider-Woman in Spider-Man Unlimited

The Spider-Man Unlimited mobile phone game created by Gameloft will soon be adding Spider-Island themed characters to it's already extensive roster. In addition to a new playable Spider-Island Mary Jane character, it looks like we will also be getting a new playable costume for the MC2's own May 'Mayday' Parker in the form of her current appearance as 'Spider-Woman' in the Secret Wars tie-in series Spider-Island which recently started publication.























Last year, the MC2's Spider-Girl became the first female Spider-Character introduced into the game. Then the MC2 took home another first with the Scarlet Spider (Felicity Hardy) becoming the first playable character introduced with the new 8-Star Rank called Titan. And now this! I wonder if there is an MC2 fan amongst Gameloft's development team?






















The recent Mary Jane love going on with the current 'Manga Mary Jane' Event which allows players to snag the new Mangaverse Spider-Woman aka Mary Jane and the upcoming Spider-Island promo image both make me very happy, too. These instances and past uses of Mary Jane over other female love interests within the game (for example the Valentines Day Event) suggests people at Gameloft know how important Mary Jane Watson is to the Spider-Man mythos. Good going, Gameloft!






















Until actually manage to obtain these new characters, I remain


frogoat 


Tuesday 3 March 2015

Character Assassination: Spider-Girl in Spider-Verse

BEWARE SPOILERS!

I've been genuinely moved by comics on only a few occasions. Usually to tears. But for the first time ever I'm genuinely angry at a comic book.

Spider-Verse- I had such high hopes for this event. I thought perhaps a giant crossover with all the various Spider-People across the multiverse would be good fun. They'd quip, they'd swap stories and compare lives, maybe collectively grieve over the many losses they've all suffered as result of the dangerous lives they all lead. As a concept, I liked it very much. It even had genuine drama built into it by the mere fact that every world is built on differing choices and outcomes. Imagine, May 'Mayday' Parker confronting 616 Peter Parker about his missing marriage. Or Peter being confronted with a version of himself that has gone down a dark path and wondering if perhaps he's capable of the same deeds. All of these things would have made for a rather entertaining read, and we could have had a nice thread or character beat to take away from it all: Exactly who are we if there are in infinite number of us- all making different decisions. Does what we do even matter in the grand scheme of things. Wouldn't that have been worth exploring?

But this isn't really about missed opportunities or how my perception and expectations weren't met. This is about bad writing. This is about not understanding a character on a fundamental level. This is about the character assassination of May 'Mayday' Parker aka Spider-Girl.


The first time we see May during the events of Spider-Verse, she's already been beaten, lying helpless beneath the fiend Daemos' boot. It's very apt, actually. May never really manages to achieve anything for herself throughout this story, remaining beneath the writers heel the entire length of this bloated event. Many Spider-People, old and new were given a spotlight for this event- both in the lead up and during the story proper. Spider-Man Noir, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man 2099, Spider-Woman, Silk and many more. Oddly enough, they were all given an active role in their own stories. Here, in Spider-Girl's own little prelude to Spider-Verse however, she does nothing but react as everyone around her makes decisions. That's not Mayday. She steps up to the plate when times are tough and she gets tougher.

May's entire family (excepting her baby brother Benjy) and her boyfriend are seemingly slaughtered and her family home burned to the ground. Mayday's entire world is built around her support network: Her allies, her friends and most especially her family. It's part of the appeal of the character that she isn't mired in the cliché superhero origin/motivation of having a dead loved one to inspire or drive them to do heroic deeds. May does the right thing because she knows it's the right thing to do. She was raised by good, loving parents who taught her right from wrong. Moral lessons such as 'With Great Power Must Also Come Great Responsibility.' And really, isn't that all we really need to be a good person? It's an intrinsic part of the Spider-Girl mythos to have family drama and conflict. Sure, the Parker family is loving and caring, but that doesn't mean everyone get's along 100% of the time.   Peter and May often clashed over her heroic identity. I can certainly say that growing up I didn't always agree with my parents, but I never doubted their love for me.It's a fairly simply yet effective way to create interesting and relatable drama. In a shortsighted way, killing off Mayday's parents certainly drives her forward and provides drama. But you can only play that out for so long and when it's all said and done they will still be dead and we've lost the core relationships that made readers care about the characters in the first place.

The removal of any of those familial relationships during Mayday's formative years utterly and completely alters her outlook and worldview on a fundamental level. Killing Peter leaves a gaping hole in May's life that can never be filled by any other character. Peter is May's role model, her mentor, her ideal of what a man is and most importantly, he is her father. Throwing an alternative world's Uncle Ben into the family doesn't somehow make things magically better. He can't adequately fill the void- no one could! Which leaves May as a different person going forward. Suddenly May is just another superhero with a dead loved-one. Only she's not being motivated or inspired by Peter's death because he already inspired her heroic actions during his life. His death adds nothing and is thus pointless as well as unearned from a narrative viewpoint.

Furthermore, instead of inspiring Mayday onward, her father's death merely leads to some out of character shouting about forgoing morals and oaths to enact revenge on Daemos. Sure, you could argue that it's a character arc, that May's distraught and upset, that it's resolved when May witnesses the 'Superior' Spider-Man slaying the Weaver for no apparent reason. But I'd argue that it wasn't a character arc, more a long string of Mayday shouting angrily about killing Daemos or finding Benjy, with no real progression until it's abruptly resolved without any clear thought process behind it. We only once see Mayday's true pain and anguish: during Tom and Ron's story (not Dan's!). Unfortunately it is unable to resolve May's story on it's own, being constrained by the larger Spider-Verse's own arc.

If you were to bring out all the fan favorite Spider-Folk for a big crossover story, wouldn't you want them to be portrayed as the fans know and love them? Which is the issue I have with May's depiction throughout the story: It's not even really Mayday. No, I'm not going to try to tell you how this character clearly isn't the real Spider-Girl because of incorrect internal monologue structure or whatever. I'm saying if you want to push all these Spider-characters (and judging by all the new Spider-Titles, that was part of the plan) then you want to be selling the reader on what makes them unique and interesting. Kaine's all dark and brooding and not so quipy. Superior Spider-Man is a ranting super villain. Spider-Gwen is...well, Gwen Stacy with witty dialog. Spider-Ham is a anthropomorphic pig, for crying out loud.  Miguel O'Hara is snarky and brilliant. So, where exactly was Spider-Girl accurately represented or portrayed, even remotely? No, instead we get May shouting vengeful epithets and calling everyone else in the room a fake.
 

Can you see why I'm upset? I really thought Spider-Girl showing up in this big story event after years of dormancy would do wonders for the character's exposure and marketability. I regret to inform you all I was terribly wrong. I think Mayday would have fared far better away from all this wanton death and destruction. As it stands now, May is no longer even called Spider-Girl and no longer wearing her distinctive costume. Instead, she's yet another in a long line to call themselves 'Spider-Woman'. Considering both Jessica Drew and Gwen Stacy both have a series (Spider-Woman and Spider-Gwen, respectively) it seems unlikely that May will receive her own title, which was secretly my fond hope following all this bloody exposure. I thought surely, with all these female Spider-heroes getting books, Mayday will merit a 'Spider-Girl' title.

The name Spider-Girl was earned by May 'Mayday' Parker over twelve long, hard years of continuous publication. To see it stripped from her again with such disregard makes me finally start to believe those that say Marvel doesn't really want May as Spider-Girl but are happy to trade on her title and goodwill. Which brings me to the costume. A gender-swapped Spider-Man costume? Are you kidding me?!? "The costume she's synonymous with isn't good enough, let's stick her in something generic that say's 'I'm just Spider-Man with boobs'." As if to infuriate me further, the actual gender-swapped Spider-Woman, Petra Parker from the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon sports this look. Don't tell me that's a coincidence.

I'm done thinking Marvel cares about or wants to promote Mayday unless they can change her into someone or something else on a fundamental level. The glimmer of hope I see on the horizon is Tom Defalco and Ron Frenz are contributing to the Secret Wars crossover.

I apologize for all the negativity but I felt I had to express myself. Hopefully sometime soon I will return with more positive things to talk about.

 Until Spider-Girl is restored to her former self, I remain

frogoat
  


Monday 15 December 2014

The One True Voice of Spider-Girl?!

I've missed the ol' blog, so I've decided to run my mouth (via the keyboard) until I feel better. All aboard the magic school bus, friends!



I've dedicated way to much of my free time (and the expensive kind of time, as well) to playing the heck out of Spider-Man Unlimited. Let's not dance around it, I'm a Spider-Girl fan through and through. I started playing this mobile game as soon as I heard Spider-Girl was going to be added to the roster of available Spider-Men as the first Spider-Female available to play. Laura Bailey does a brilliant job as the voice May 'Mayday' Parker. She sounds like the character has always sounded in my head. I've been digging around and I'm certain the talented Mrs Bailey is the very first person to voice the character. 


For some reason my phone makes Spider-Girl appear 'shiny'.



Well....if you want to get nit-picky (and I know many comic fans are want to do just that) Tasia Valenza voiced the original Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew) in the Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (2006) game which featured an alternate costume of Spider-Girl. But she was still flying and shooting her blasts, it was just a different character 'skin'. 


Can you spot the Spider-Girl?



Also, Tara Strong voiced an unidentified 'Spider-Girl' character (a member of the 'Spider-Friends' team) in the Marvel Super Hero Squad Online (2011) who wore a different mask exposing some of her face as well as her hair.  But again, not exactly THE Spider-Girl. So there you go, Laura Bailey is the first person to voice May 'Mayday' Parker.


Thoughts?

 The Super Hero Squad version is probably related to this 'Spider-Girl' from the Spider-Man and Friends toy line. This incarnation was included not only in the toy line but also has a self-titled song on the 'Spider-Man and Friends CD' Album (2004) which ties-in to the line. Check out Track 4, 'Spider-Girl' . 'She's smart and strong and lots of fun and she gets along with everyone!' Sounds about right.

I believe she's Spider-Man's 'cousin'. Because Kids.
Until I hear Joshua Keaton is providing the voice of Spider-Girl for the Marvel Heroes 2015 update, I remain

frogoat