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.
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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
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