Spider-Girl

Context

Spider-Girl is the daughter of Marvel Comics’ Spider-Man (Peter Parker). She lives in a possible future of the Marvel Universe, called the MC2 continuity. She appeared in 1998.

This profile covers Spider-Girl vol. 1 #1-25, and is done as an emergent history profile. At this point the stories are in the same vein as early Spider-Man stories, but with a much more late 1990s approach to narration and drama. May Parker is a new spider-person for a new age, but the stories keep it old school.

Spider-Girl is famously unsinkable. Though her books have repeatedly sunk under sustainable sales level, her loyal fanbase has successfully clamoured for her return multiple times.

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Background

Powers & Abilities

Spider-Girl is superhumanly fast, precise and agile. She can jump superhumanly high and far, and has enhanced durability and endurance.

Originally she seems strong enough to lift about 2 tons, but during this era grows strong enough to lift close to five tons.

She can cling to surfaces with but a touch like her dad can. But at this stage it still requires concentration and she might slip if she cannot focus.

Her spider-sense seems, at this stage, similar to his. Though very early on she lacks the training to instinctively react to it.

During this era, Spider-Girl discovers that she can “reverse” her wall-crawling touch to propel away objects she is touching. This odd ability can be useful as it doesn’t exert any reaction force. That is, Spider-Girl can touch stuff to make it fly away without being herself pushed back.

This minor power is usually used as a secret weapon to launch a projectile, and seems to be stronger than Spider-Girl’s throwing arm.

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Skills and gear

Spider-Girl fights smart, relying in her evasive ability and environment to observe her opponent and devise a strategy.

Her gymnastic and acrobatic skills are superhuman, making her extremely mobile and able to bounce and flip all over the place without having to really think about it. She’s ricocheting off walls and stuff all the time and is almost always in mid-air, making for a frustrating target.

Though at first she is clearly a beginner, she trains real hard and learns quickly – by the end of this era she’s clearly on her path to become a major super-hero, especially since she’s quite powerful in the MC2 setting.

Mayday is a serious high school student, and an excellent basketball player. But she doesn’t otherwise have particular knowledge and skills.

She has a strong personality and can be quite convincing – especially if she’s wearing the Spider-Girl costume, which conceals her actual age.

May uses refurbished Spider-Man equipment – including the famous web-shooters. She uses her webshooters for the usual basics (swinging around, webbing up opponents, shooting a web line at something and yanking it toward her, etc.), but will also often spin a web shield or cocoon to protect herself from big area-of-effect attacks she’s not sure she can dodge all the way out of.

One of Spider-Man’s old belt-mounted themed flashlights was later built into her bracers, as well as a housing for her cell phone.

The MC2 continuity

The Marvel Comics 2 (MC2) imprint depicted an alternate future of the Marvel Universe. This timeline (Earth-982) diverges from Earth-616 in 1998, when the comics launched.

It is set 15-to-20 years after 1998. During this time, characters capable of ageing have aged normally. This means that the older heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe 1998 are now mostly retired or dead. A new generation is emerging, and many of them are the teenage children of notable Marvel Universe characters.

This is thus somewhat reminiscent of the pre-Crisis Earth-1 for the DC Universe, where young heroes such as Infinity, Inc. were beginning to replace stalwarts such as the Justice Society of America.

Though it’s almost two decades in the future, the MC2 continuity isn’t particularly futuristic. Assuming that it’s just like the real world during the mid-2010s (plus the comic book stuff, of course) will reflect the material.

Power levels are generally lower than in the modern Marvel Universe. In some ways it’s closer to the late 1960s Marvel Universe. The power curve also seems sharper, with the difference between, say, “Class 5” and “Class 10” strength being more significant than in the modern DC or Marvel settings.

Spider-Girl was the flagship MC2 character, and the first to appear. She is also determined to be the last – Spider-Girl is famous for the number of times it was cancelled for low sales then relaunched under the pressure of a small but loyal fan base.

History

May “Mayday” Parker is the daughter of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson-Parker. She was named after her great-aunt. As the story opens, she’s about 15.

When May was but a few months old, Peter had his last fight with the Green Goblin (Norman Osborn). Osborn was killed, and Parker nearly died ; one of his legs had to be amputated.

Unwilling to resume being a super-hero now that he was a father, he focused on his family life and became a scientific specialist and CSI expert for the New York Police Department. Mrs. Watson-Parker moved on from being a model and actress to executive positions in the fashion industry. They never told May about her father’s past identity.

The Parkers’ beloved daughter grew up to become a popular student at the Midtown High School. She was also a straight A student, a member of the science club and a starter  for the girls’ basketball team.

White girls can jump

During a key basketball match, May scored the decisive points with an impressive slam-dunk. Knowing a superhuman leap when they saw one, her parents realised that, despite having tested as a baseline human so far, Mayday had indeed inherited her dad’s powers.

Mere hours later, the Green Goblin (“Normie” Osborn) assaulted and threatened May to challenge her father.

May overheard her parents discussing the situation, and MJ explained whom Peter had been. Realising that her dad was going to face the Goblin while limping around with a cane, May borrowed a pair of webshooters and the costume once used by Ben Reilly, which Peter had kept among his memorabilia.

She prevented Normie from killing her parents, and took him down for the police to arrest. May and her folks then burned the equipment she had used, to affirm that it had been a one-off emergency and they’d return to their peaceful life.

May nevertheless stashed a pair of webshooters, and kept an old gym suit and ski mask as an ad-hoc costume – just in case. She felt increasingly bad about not using her abilities to help people, and her passion for basketball was waning since her superhuman abilities meant that she was cheating.

When she noticed a man trying to shadow her father, she returned to action as Spider-Girl and clashed with the villainous Mister Nobody.

Junior web-slinger

After some hesitation, May assembled a new copy of the Reily costume and started nightly patrols to practice her abilities. Though she clearly lacked training, she narrowly defeated the criminal Crazy Eight with some help from the enigmatic vigilante Darkdevil (Reilly Tyne).

After discovering her activities, her father went ballistic – even after she saved him from possession by the Venom symbiote, who had returned for revenge after years of containment.

Mary Jane was the first to change her mind. She saw the contradiction between the values they had taught to May and preventing her from using her powers for the common good. She was also more aware than Peter that May was now almost an adult. Peter soon came to agree with his wife.

Early on May received training from her “uncle” Phil Urich. Urich had had several abortive careers as a very minor super-hero, starting a “good” version of the Green Goblin. Due to a misunderstanding, Urich thought that his colleague and best friend Peter Parker was supportive of May’s activities as Spider-Girl, and he designed training routines for her.

Once Peter agreed to let her be Spider-Girl, he also started intensively training his daughter. He focused on making her use of her spider-sense instinctive, to lower her chances of being harmed.

May was run ragged by running two concurrent training programs on top of her high school life. However, several incidents made it clear that, without intensive training, she’d be killed or, worse, responsible for one or more deaths.

Is she tough ? Listen bud…

As she established herself in New York City, Spider-Girl developed a number of enemies – Mister Nobody, Crazy Eight, Spyral, Dragon King, Killerwatt, Misery (Melissa Carsdale), Kaine (Peter Parker clone), Mister Abnormal, Raptor (Brenda Drago), Earthshaker, Funny Face, and Dragonfist.

She also accidentally travelled back in time for a short while, meeting her parents while they were still in high school and meeting her namesake May Reilly Parker for the first time.

Spider-Girl further developed alliances with the Daredevil-themed Darkdevil, as well as Ladyhawk – actually twin sisters also training with Phil Urich. On a whim she also applied to the Avengers – though they weren’t taking applications, the young heroes tested her just in case. Spider-Girl defeated most of the team by herself in a catch-the-flag game, and was accepted as a reserve member.

Spider-Girl also occasionally associated with the Buzz, who she’d later discover was her friend and fellow high school student Jack J. Jameson.

Mayday ended the Parker/Osborn war by defeating Normie Osborn a second time, and appealing to his ethics. Though she didn’t realise it at first, her plea actually worked. During his prison stay, Osborn chose to let go of his dreams of being the Green Goblin.

She also mollified the Jameson/Parker feud by taking a job as an amateur new photographer for the elderly J.J. Jameson, who still published the Daily Bugle.

However, Funny face came back with his Savage Six, running Spider-Girl through a gauntlet of villains whom she had previously defeated. Though Funny Face was defeated and his hostages freed, Spider-Girl soon realised that something was off. During the struggle, she had taken a large electrical shock – and her powers were now gone !

Could this be the END ?! (tah-dum-dum)

Description

May is a skinny, athletic teenager with very short hair. Very short hairstyles seem popular for young women in the MC2 future.

She has a triangular face and usually sports a belly shirt to show off her abs, athletic trousers or jeans, golden earrings – and occasionally a small necklace. Even as Spider-Girl, she’ll have her school backpack if she hasn’t a convenient place to stash it.

May’s eyes and hair have seen a remarkable number of colouring errors in early books, but eventually settled to blue and the same shade of brown as her father.

May occasionally wears glasses, though if she has a vision problem it must be very, very minor. As the series progresses she experiments with more elaborate hair styles, clothing and accessories. These are middle-class New York City high school student styles circa 2000.

Since May occasionally adds a few goofy and creative touches to her wardrobe, I suppose she’d be classified as a hipster by those sufficiently ignorant of matters sartorial.

May has the magical power of never getting helmet hair despite wearing a tight hood as Spider-Girl.

Personality

May is a great kid – smart, independent, courageous, full of energy, altruistic, popular. She was raised to be a do-gooder. Her parents are awesome, and she loves them dearly. She frequently finds them too protective, but understands their stance even though she needs to occasionally fight back to get some independence.

May’s sense of responsibility and ethical behaviour is extraordinary. She will always, always do the right thing, employ an appropriate level of violence, contain situations, sacrifice her own happiness to let others have a go at it, save everybody’s life (except for people not deemed important by the script, of course), work on being the best hero she can be, offer her help to people in need, support criminals who want to reform, etc. etc.

If she’s unable to prevent something bad from happening, she will feel *terrible* about it.

As Spider-Girl, she’s very much like her father was during his early career. She is driven by a responsibility to protect people around her, wise-cracking, and fond of corny blabbering in combat to distract her opponents.

Though she does the Spider-Man comedy thing when under stress (sometimes even when she’s out of costume), in her day-to-day life she’s a serious person, not particularly prone to joking and concerned about the well-being of people around her.

Mayday can’t stand sexist remarks, or objectifying comments about her body. In DC Heroes terms she’ll probably put some Hero Points  behind the next attack targeting a person who made such remarks.

Somebody calling her “babe” or somesuch will probably get a good verbal chewing even if they just used the term out of habit. She occasionally wears feminist T-shirts, which seem more mainstream in the MC2 universe than in the real world.

Teen-Age Confidential Confessions

Like with many high school students, the unending school melodrama and the romantic entanglements (real or imagined) around her take up a large amount of her attention. She’s still learning how to handle this, and how she wants to behave with her friends, acquaintances and possible boyfriends.

For a large chunk of this era she is torn between dating two classmates — Brad Miller and Jack J. Jameson — though she eventually drifts away from Brad after he hesitates for too long.

Mayday is very, very interested in boys roughly her age, as well as famous teenage heartthrobs such as Psi-Lord (Franklin Richards) or actor Leonard Groote. However, her strict ethics and the legendary Parker luck keep getting in the way of her romantic life. Even her first kiss is still dozens of issues away.

Which means she’s even less lucky in love than her dad was at her age. Which gives one pause.

Also, May loves shoes. Shoes are important — almost as important as boys.

Quotes

“I hate to sound like a total geek, but I could use a little exposition at this point.”

Spider-Girl: “Actually, I was hoping we could skip that part, and jump right to where you tell me your origin — which will, hopefully, give me a few subtle clues on how to defeat you !”
Dragon King: “Do you really think I’m that stupid ?”
Spider-Girl: “You don’t want to know.”

“I had a responsibility to act… so I *did*. I don’t want anyone to ever suffer because Spider-Girl failed to help when she should have !”

May: “Mom, t-this isn’t what it *looks* like —!”
Mary Jane: “You mean you aren’t searching your father’s trunk in the hope of finding an old costume or spare webshooters ?”
May: “Okay, it is what it looks like.”

“Whether you like it or not, I’m the hero now ! This is my time ! My LIFE ! My moment is now… and I’m seizing it !”

“As iffffff !”

Crazy Eight: “Please be a good sport and die already !”
Spider-Girl: “Sorry, I have concert tickets for Saturday night.”

Dragon King: “What do you want ?”
Spider-Girl: “You mean, aside from world peace and a calorie-free burger ?”

Nova: “My speed is far greater than yours !”
Spider-Girl: “It takes a very special man to brag about something like that !”

Killerwatt: “I’ll zap you into next week !”
Spider-Girl: “Aim for Thursday night, there’s a television show I’m anxious to see.”

“I don’t know what’s suddenly gotten into you, but you can’t go around destroying property and beating on people ! You just CAN’T ! You’re supposed to be one of the good guys !”

(Preventing Funny Face from killing Darkdevil in a high school gym) “I’m afraid school regulations specifically forbid the slaying of masked vigilantes at official functions !”

Sabreclaw: “Time to DIE, Spider-Girl !”
Spider-Girl: “You sure ? According to my watch, I have years to spare. Although Mickey does seem to indicate that there’s a long prison stay in your future !”

DCU History

May could be the daughter of the original Blue Beetle and her powers are a side-effect of his 2X use.

Alternatively, Marvel’s Silver and Modern age could be inserted in-between the Golden Age and the condensed modern age starting circa 1970 and running until the late 1980s.

The Fantastic Four’s final battle with Hyperstorm and the Avenger’s disastrous foray to an alternate Earth would have occurred in the early 1990s at around the same time that Superman and Batman were making their first appearances.

By Jay Myers and Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Marvel Universe (MC2 continuity).

Helper(s): Gareth Lewis, Paul Ewande, David Johnston, Darci.

Writeup completed on the 3^rd of June, 2014.