Note: Spider-girl was a character published in Marvel's MC2 Universe from 1998-2010. In this post, I include my review of the Spider-girl trade paperback which contained Issues 0-8 as well as the 2nd Digest which contained issues 6-11 due to the overlap:

Spider-Girl by Tom DeFalco

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In 1998, Marvel created an alternate universe called the MC2 Universe with stories written by Tom DeFalco. It envisioned future heroes carrying on for many of the old standbys. In this alternate universe, the undisputed star was Spider-girl (May "Mayday" Parker), the daughter of Spider-man and Mary Jane Watson. In the mainstream continuity at the time, Mary Jane miscarried their only child. Spider-girl imagined that the child had lived and that she developed spider powers in High School. Peter Parker had retired as Spider-man after losing a leg and was now a police scientist.

This Trade Paperback Contains Issues 0-8 of the Spider-girl series beginning with the return of the Green Goblin in Issue #0 and continuing on as Spider-girl meets up with villains old and new including Venom, Crazy Eight, Spyral, and the Dragon King while also meeting up with the universe's heroes including Dark Devil, the Fantastic Five, and Lady Hawk.

As great as the superhero action is, the story is also a great dramatic story due to her parents disapproval of her being Spider-girl. If she were one of those rebellious kids, this really wouldn't be much of a story. However, what makes her story work so well is that May is really a good kid who respects her parents. When she's disrespectful to her mom in response to a question she corrects herself. Ultimately she's torn between doing what her parents said and living out the values that they taught her and given Spider-man's credo of, "With great power comes great responsibility," we know what that teaching is.

It's not ultimately just a great superhero story, but a great human drama that parents and kids can relate to.

There are of course some minor problems. The most glaring is that the artwork for Issue 0 is really poor. However, it did pick up in the regular run in Issues 1-8. So overall, this is a great book that I highly recommend.





Spider-Girl Vol. 2: Like Father, Like Daughter by Tom DeFalco

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Great stories as Spider-girl continues to grow as a character including how Spider-man retired to take care of family and Peter growing to accept May in the role.

Loved the trip back to the 1960s and the meeting of Spider-girl and her father's younger self, although they overplayed sexism as such in the 60s.

Still, Spider-girl continues to be a great read so far.



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