With the futuristic year 2020 ushering in a new comic event commemorating the characters of Earth-8410 aka 2020 A.D. - most notably Iron Man 2020- I figured now would be a perfect time to acknowledge the overlooked superheroine in the room: May Parker of Earth-8410 aka Spider-Girl 2020.
While I may have briefly touched on the 2020 in the distant past, this will be a more focused look at the character. To begin with, the character is not a comic book native, making her first (and to date, only) appearance in a novel. Written by Tom Defalco and eluki bes shakar (now legally known as Rosemary Edghill) with interior chapter art by penciller Tom Grummett and inker Doug Hazlewood, X-Men & Spider-Man: Time’s Arrow Book 3: The Future was first published in 1998 with a September release date listed on its interior pages. This third and final book in the Time’s Arrow trilogy of novels by Defalco (paired with a different co-writer for each book) marks the debut of Spider-Girl 2020 in its fifth chapter which takes place in -you guessed it- the year 2020 A.D.!
The story sees Spider-Man (the Main Marvel Universe or Earth-616 version, according to the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Alternate Universes 2005) on a mission with Cable of the X-Men and Aliya of Earth-9870 to prevent Kang’s destruction of various alternate worlds. Having been hired by Kang to stop the heroes, Earth-8410’s Arno Stark aka Iron Man of the year 2020 recruits his reality’s Spider-Girl under the pretext of protecting her territory Queens, New York.
It’s here we learn that this world’s May Parker had lost her own father, and had followed in his heroic footsteps during her freshman year of high school, aged only 14 years old. May notes she can’t remember a time when she didn’t know her father was Spider-Man, and recalls how he died with his secret identity intact, leaving some people mere years later to believe the web-swinger was still alive. May, now ‘twentysomething’ still lived with her mother Mary Jane Watson-Parker due to the housing crunch. Mary Jane was initially not pleased when May announced her intentions to suit up as Spider-Girl at such a young age. May works as a ‘page designer’ for Cadence Communications Corporation… which I guess makes her a web designer, right?
Operating as one of 2020’s last lone vigilantes or ‘Independents’, Spider-Girl protects her territory of Queens, New York from ‘incursions of Wreckers, Illegals, rioting Vidiots or worse’. As for powers and abilities, this Spider-Girl has inherited her father’s spider-like ability to stick to walls, strength, speed and agility, which are described as being equal to the original web-head’s own. May also utilizes ‘gold bracelets of cylinders’ on both wrists that fire explosive ‘venom blasts’ that produce a poisoning effect in their targets. Presumably these are dual-purpose web-shooters, as Spider-Girl is also seen spinning webs. It’s not clear if this May Parker possesses a spider-sense, though she does appear to detect people rather quickly.
As for her costume, I think it’s worth using some direct quotes to demonstrate how the chapter illustrations by Tom Grummett (though absolutely beautiful) do perhaps differ from the books text descriptions. Spider-Girl is first described as wearing a ‘tight scarlet-and-blue combat suit’ with a ‘spill of red hair down [her] back’ beneath which ‘her eyes were invisible behind the white shields of her mask’. For the most part, Spider-Girl is referred to while in action as a ‘red-and-blue figure’ and angrily notes when seeing Spider-Man that his costume is an echo of her own. When Spider-Man catches clear sight of Spider-Girl we get a more detailed portrait spelled out: ‘Her costume was red and blue, just like his, with a black pattern of webbing against the red. Around each wrist she wore a gold bracelet of cylinders-possibly the source of the blasts she’d bracketed him with-and a half-mask above which her long red hair whipped around her face like Medusa’s snakes.’
This combined with the mentions of the costume being red and blue (rather than blue and red) and Peter noting it’s ‘so like his own’ make it seem as the design is meant to more closely resemble the original Spider-Man design. That said there is this one quote that might balance out the artwork somewhat; ‘May Parker had always known that she’d grow up to wear the webbed mask and the famous blue and scarlet garb.’ When added to a brief mention of the first two Spider-Women, it might help explain the potential discrepancy. Either way, I’ve grown to like the Tom Grummett's Spider-Girl 2020 design, even if it does seem to be missing the gold web-shooters.
As for the actual story, accompanying Arno Stark’s Iron Man and his Iron-Bots into the sewers beneath Queens, where they encountered Spider-Man, Cable and Aliya, Spider-Girl is shocked and angered to encounter an apparent imposter posing as her deceased father. When the trio of dimension-hopping heroes briefly escape, Arno brings a subway stop’s ceiling down on them, against the heroic Spider-Girl’s protests. However, Spider-Man and company are rescued from the rubble by Machine Man and his friends, the Midnight Wreckers. When Arno returns to finish the job, Spider-Girl again battles Spider-Man until he unmasks and convinces her of his good intentions. With Iron Man knocked out of commission, Spider-Girl orders his Iron-Bots to retreat, allowing Spider-Man, Cable and Aliya to complete their mission.
Unfortunately, that’s it for this Spider-Girl, except to say her appearance in the Time’s Arrow novel was later confirmed as taking place in the same 2020 A.D. as various other characters in The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Alternate Universes 2005. That is, Spider-Girl 2020 shares the same universe as not just Arno Stark’s version of Iron Man but also Machine Man, Death’s Head and Wild Thing (no, not that one! This one’s name is Nikki Doyle). The coloured image of Spider-Girl 2020 originates from the aforementioned handbook as part of a composite image of various denizens of that reality by various artists. The composition, colouring and art reconstruction were (I believe) the work of Scott Elmer under the pseudonym Pond Scum. I mention this as there only exist two official images of the Spider-Girl 2020 character, and this is, to date, the only one reproduced in colour.
Notably, writer Tom Defalco is the co-creator of the world and various characters of Earth-8410’s 2020 including Arno Stark, the Machine Man of 2020 and the Midnight Wreckers and afterwards would frequently reference them in his other work. Or at least he used to, before he conceived the MC2 Universe with frequent collaborator and handsome devil Ron Frenz. I’d absolutely love to see a small crossover with these two Tom Defalco-created Spider-Girl’s, especially because they have such varied stories, ages and costumes and present very different iterations of May Parker.
Until I stop living in the far-flung year of…erm…. the present, I remain
frogoat
