Kicking Death in the nuts. LITERALLY!

From Spider-Girl #56

I was tempted to say 'Nuff Said!' but I felt I should explain this one a bit. The big guy? Seth, the self proclaimed Serpent God of Death. In the background you'll notice Mary Jane in childbirth. This story is the end of Season of the Serpent, which is a favorite story every time I re-read it. It puts Mayday through hell, taking on a bad guy she stands no chance against, leading her to places she's never been and culminates in the birth of Peter and Mary Jane's second child, 'Benjy'. It has a clear theme of death and birth, and leaves May in what I consider a worthy place amongst her super-hero peers. Having been nearly beaten to death, and left to die slowly at the bottom of the river harnessed to an an anchor, she squares off for another round with Seth, this time with as many allies as she can muster all in one place. Unfortunately, Seth traps them all in the Avengers Compound using his personal force field, leaving May the only one to stop him. It's a great story, with some real emotional moments, great action and great character beats. Plus, well, the page above speaks for it's self.

Until nut shots stop being epic, I remain

frogoat

Supportive Cast

Character Development

A character is a stock character when they are defined only by a few traits. 'Oh, hey it's the black guy!' or 'The geeky friend' or 'Bitchy popular girl'. I figure if you have trouble describing the character without resorting to stereotypes, then the character is either underdeveloped or just plain boring. So, does Spider-Girl's civilian cast hold up? Let's have a look.

Davida

Davida Kirby starts off, to my mind, as a generic best friend. But let's dig a little further. Davida plays basketball along side Mayday when the series starts. She keeps up with celebrities and gossip and has a knack for knowing when a store is having a sale... normally shoe store sales, now I come to think of it. Davida wants to either go pro in basketball or go into public relations, following in her mothers footsteps. Davida does well enough in school when she wants to and is team player, both in sport and in balancing friends. She does however treat males as disposable objects and has a stubborn streak. She outed a team mate as a mutant after she took her spot on the team, believing she was a better player.

Courtney Duran

Courtney is May's earliest friend. She's the geeky friend. She loves the Lord of the Rings trilogy. She's in the science club. She has thick glasses. She's a little overweight. Oh my god, clearly a stereotype! But wait, hold on a second, come back! She's also the only friend May's had who would stick with her no matter what. Her friendship is unconditional, she's loyal like a German Shepard. God, bad analogy! She listens, she's there for you, she wont judge, she's understanding. Apparently, May and Courtney first met when they were four, May's first day at pre-preschool. May was feeling like crap and being picked on by second grader until Courtney came along and bit him on the leg. They've been friends ever since. There's that loyal man's-best-friend theme again. God, it's not meant to be unflattering! She's a favorite supporting character. Actually, following that theme, she's also too forgiving. When she was hit by a car and everyone else came to see her except Mayday, she shrugged it off.

Moose Mansfield

Maurice is a jock and a bit of an idiot. He jumps to conclusions, flies off the handle easily and is a bit of a bully. His favorite entertainer and politician is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yeah, Moose is a dick. Only he's not. Starting out as the jerk in cast, he slowly grew into one of the best, most well rounded, most well loved characters in the book. Issue 19 granted us insight into his inner most thoughts, which was a word-balloon-free page of him staring blankly. Soon though, Moose starts showing his soft side, saving Jimmy from a villain attack, humorously believing Spider-Girl was Courtney....yeah, I know, not too bright. He ends up getting to know Courtney and falls for her. Things change for him when his father is diagnosed with cancer; Moose relies on May for support to get through this. Eventually everything comes to a head when his father is struck down on the job as a firefighter. Moose is forced to move away to stay with his relatives, as he can't take care of his little brothers on his own. There is one other piece to the Maurice Arthur Mansfield puzzle that changes him as a person, but I don't want to spoil everything.

I'm out,

frogoat

Spider-man with boobs?

I guess the obvious statement made about any female character derived from a popular male character is 'Hey, it's just Superman with boobs'. And yeah, that's valid some of the time. I feel like She-Hulk was only created to protect a copyright, just as I know Spider-Woman was first created for that express purpose. Don't misunderstand though, both characters have gone on to have a rich history of events that characterizes them far afield from their male counterparts. Okay, so what makes Spider-Girl unique, even amongst other Spider-females? I'm going to try to answer that question.

Origin? What origin?

It's even become a running gag in the books themselves that May 'Mayday' Parker has almost nothing in the way of an origin story.  As Mayday says, she just woke up one day and found out she had her powers. That's it. Hmm. Well, okay, she had to fight Normie Osborn, the grandson of the original Green Goblin who had vowed a vendetta and yada yada yada. But still, this leads straight into her series as it's set up initially.  No swearing vengeance on crime, no traumatic childhood, no loved-one struck down. Her characterization comes from how she was raised. My god, a normal childhood for a superhero? Could it be?!

Without Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

Now, not to be down on my main man Peter, but seriously, how often does he hang up his webs, vowing never to wear them again, only to take them up again to save someone next issue? May's the kinda girl who, even when she loses her abilities, she still can't quit. See, May's not like her dear ol' dad. Whereas Peter started out as a bit of an outcast who, when he got his amazing abilities, he instantly used them to make money and live his dream, May is different. Peter had to have the trauma of his uncles death to shock him into heroics, to knock him out of his hubris. May simply does the right thing because....well, because it is the right thing to do. For crying out loud, she borrowed a Goblin Glider and equipment to keep on helping people when she lost her powers, doing push ups and admitting to herself that she wasn't done with the hero thing. I guess what I'm saying is May Parker has ovaries of steel and a strong work ethic. :p

Heel Face Turn, or 'No Rematch For You!' 

  You know the routine, the villain and the hero go toe to toe a couple times then the villain falls into a cycle of grudge matches or revenge attacks.....and *yawn* we've all seen it before. For the most part, May's rogues gallery changes often, with only a few big bads returning to spice things up and push chess pieces around. May's belief in the good in people has not only set her apart from her father, but has reformed so many of her former enemies it should be a freakin' super-power. Normie (Green Goblin) Osborn, Brenda (Raptor) Drago, The Dragon King,  Mr Abnormal, Killerwatt, Mayhem, the list goes on and on.

Genre Savvy 

This one I kinda like for the simplest reasons. When I was younger, I often wondered why, being heroes and all, they continued to battle at the slightest provocation. 'He's talking to the bad guy, therefore, he must be working with them!' In the MC2, the heroes try to avoid this. Sometimes they come to blows, but usually, they are all well aware that in the hero biz, things are not always as they seem. May even cites this when confronting her fellow heroes, 'Oh great! Another misunderstanding!'. One of my favorites comes from Stinger: 'Everybody, CHILL! Nobody want's to look like a jerk by starting a fight over some silly misunderstanding! I suggest we retire to the nearest rooftop and try to sort things out like adults.' Spider-Girl: 'Sounds good to me!'

She's a Joiner

Peter Parker was always a loner, either by nature or by choice. Sure, the Bugle never helped his image, but if he'd joined the Fantastic Four like he planned in Amazing Spider-man #1 he could have sued J Jonah Jameson for libel. Problem Solved. It took him around fourty years to join the Avengers and even longer to be a full-time member of the FF. Spider-Girl decided early on to seek allies where ever she could. She joined the new Avengers team in Spider-Girl #13, made friends with the F5 in Spider-Girl #3 and founded her own team in Spider-Girl #42; The...erm....even newer Warriors? We'll call them the Warriors. Okay? Got it? Good. Super villain giving you problems? Call in the Avengers, and the Fantastic Five, and the Warriors and the Nation Guard. Care to surrender?
 

Nobody Dies On My Watch

May takes every death personally, even going so far as to mourn the lose of Crazy Eight after he is shot and killed by another villain. Tom Defalco said it best in an interview,  "Peter failed to stop a burglar who later killed his uncle. Mayday succeeded in stopping a super villain and prevented him from killing her dad. Pete learned that people die when he fails. She learned that people live when she succeeds. It's a subtle, but profound difference."

I've only scratched the surface, but these are the major points I felt sum up Mayday.

Until Marvel prints a Spider-Girl digest volume 13,

I'm frogoat.

Spider-Girl: My Geek Awakening

I'm not really sure what to put up here, but seeing as this is my first try, let's just run with this and see how it goes, aye? Right.

Spider-Girl

Spider-Girl was the comic book and the character that not only captured my childhood mind and held my interest but also, I feel, the reason I am the person I am. I realize that sounds over the top, and it is, but hear me out. I picked up my first ever comic in 1998. My mother had to run into the newsagent in town and being, I think, 8 or 9 at the time, I instantly followed her in the hopes of scoring some free swag. I looked at the magazine section, not much to draw my eyes until, oh! Spider-man! MUM! And so I grabbed my first comic and looked at the cover, featuring a villain (I'd later find out this was the bowl-headed illusionist Mysterio) trapping Spidey in his giant head. Great cover. It was Spider-man: Chapter One #7 or #8 and, cover aside, it was crap, utter rubbish, rushed and confusing with only a mild attempt at following a coherent plot. But, hey, Spider-man! So, the next week, having read and re-read it numerous times, I found myself back in the local news agency ready and raring to find a new one. I'll admit, I was a little disappointed when I could only find other comics without Spidey until--hey, is that Spider-ma--no! The titles wrong. Spider-Girl. Hmmm...and the Fantastic --what? Five?! What the heck is this?! MUM!

It was Spider-Girl issue #3, 'Fun 'n' Games with the Fantastic Five. I won't pretend I paid much attention at the time to who wrote it or who provided the great art work, all I knew was this story was awesome. In one issue, without me having the slightest clue about who May 'Mayday' Parker was, why Peter Parker was a forensic's guy for the NYPD  or anything about this strange world I found myself in, it didn't seem to matter. I picked up all the information I needed from the issue: Peter is receiving a commendation for his work, May has promised to attend, things happen and May isn't just late, but misses the whole thing. I'm simplifying, so let me add that in one issue Tom Defalco, our esteemed writer managed to tell me so much about the way this book works, it's premise, the tone, the balance of action and drama. Peter is still the same geeky guy we know, but he's a bit more mature, not world-weary, but certainly a changed man. He's grown up. May is something of an exception among teenagers, and I don't mean her wall-crawling. She is friends or at least on speaking terms with the 'cool' kids, the popular girl, the football player and the big bully while also hanging with the nerdy girl and the geeky guy. Yet, somehow, May just seems normal, she fits in. She is Mary Jane's daughter as well as Peter's. Whereas Peter was socially inept, May finds making friends easy (something that will become a big part of defining her as a character, apart from her fathers looming web-covered shadow)

Anyways...where was I? Right, so May is supposed to attend a ceremony for her dad late that afternoon. At school, May's friends convince her to come with them after school to the Baxter Building-home of the Fantastic Five, now a kind of exhibition/ science center. We get some conflict amongst May's friends, who don't get along as a group. The exhibition is disrupted by a villain who battles the entire Fantastic Five and eventually Spider-Girl who, being new at this hero-biz, screws up. Eventually, they catch him, but not before May is trapped for hours in another dimension. May arrives at the ceremony only to be greeted by Mary Jane, who tells her 'It was a very nice ceremony. To bad you missed it'. The issue ends with May realizing the tension and strain of trying to live this life. She's going to have to make some tough calls and it's never going to be easy. I hope that somehow I've relayed what it is I fell in love with about this book to you. I've never been very good with getting things from my brain and out there to be mewled over by humanity. It was a simple enough plot, but the care and attention that went into every panel was so clear to me. I could feel the love and thought every time I turned the page.



Needless to say, I got the next issue. Sadly, after that I couldn't find the series for about a year until Spider-Girl #17 rocked my world. It promised a double-sized story extravaganza and boy, did it ever deliver. But that's another story...