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Title: Spider-Girl
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents have little to worry about with this series, as the violence is very light, and most kids over the age of 5 and 7 can read this series. Fans of "Spider-Man" who are looking for a good continuation of their favorite web slinging hero will fall in love with this series Women will also most likely find a lot to like about "Spider-Girl" since the story has just as much romance and drama in the series as it has action.. |
Does anyone here remember the dreadful “Spider-Woman” comic book? If you don’t, then I envy you. For those who are unfamiliar with “Spider-Woman,” it was basically a terrible, TERRIBLE mess of a comic book that Marvel created back in 1978 in an attempt to draw woman into reading comic books! The story was about little more then a woman who inherted spider powers, and thus became a female version of Spider-Man. To describe why this series was such an utter failure is difficult to do; the best I can recommend is to buy a single issue out of the 25-cent bargain bin at your local comic book shop, and then you will see why the series only lasted a few years. I figured that maybe comic book companies would have figured by now that we do not want female versions of superheroes that exist - if a girl wants to read Spider-Man, then she will very well read Spider-Man. Why go through the trouble to make a female version of Spider-Man if you’re not going to do anything different with the character (other then change the gender, of course)? What we (and more importantly, women) want are unique female superheroes that are not spawned off of men in tights, but are in fact originals in their own right.
After all, I really do believe that the only reason we still have Wonder Woman is because she’s a character all her own, and not a spin-off. Oh well, if Marvel seems to think that the only way women will read comics (and still attract some men at the same time) is to make a female version of a popular male superhero, then they should at least try to make them as good as this series is. The story in “Spider-Girl” takes place some 15 or so years after Spider-Man’s final battle with the Green Goblin. For those of you who are unaware of the story, Spider-Man’s very last fight with the Green Goblin killed Norman Osborn and claimed Peter Parker’s left leg as a prize. Once this fight was over Peter had no interest to continue his dual identity as Spider-Man, and he finally burned the costume and decided to raise a family. This brings us to Peter’s daughter, May “MayDay” Parker. May has been living a pretty normal life for a high schooler, without any knowledge of her father’s superhero days. No one notices anything different about May, but when May shows some unusual jumping skills at her high school basketball game, Peter and Mary Jane start to realize that May inherited more then her mother’s good looks, she inherited her father’s spidey genes. Peter and MJ have no intention of telling May about her “unique basketball abilities,” but the next day when May is walking home with her friends from school, a cloaked goon who calls himself the Green Goblin tells May to tell her father to meet him underneath one of the New York bridges at nightfall. As of this point on Peter and Mary Jane realize the cat is out of the bag, and they tell May everything.
Once May finds out about her father's past, she decides that she should use her powers to help people in her life too, as Spider-Girl. Her dad, however, is less then thrilled to hear of this revelation. He forbids her to do any crimefighting whatsoever. Of course, you can tell that May is going to be keeping some major secrets from her parents for awhile. What makes “Spider-Girl” work where most women superhero spin-offs don’t isn’t the originality of this series (because this series isn’t any more or any less original then previous efforts), what makes this spin-off more enjoyable is the fact that this series has more heart to it then previous spin-offs of this nature had. When “Spider-Woman” plagued comic book shelves back in the 80’s, no one really liked the series because it was doing nothing more then trying to cash in on a name. “Spider-Girl” takes a different approach by having the events in this series actually being related to the Spider-Man universe. Having Spider-Girl be the daughter of the original Spider-Man is the twist that’s supposed to hook the reader into sticking to the series, and it works surprisingly well. Not only that, but by having May’s father objecting to his daughter doing the very thing he did for years creates a very real tension between the two characters, tension that was most likely not there before, and you read the book with anticipation on where the relationship will end up.
May also has a couple of boy friends she hangs out with on a regular basis, both of whom love her, but the writers made a very wise choice to make both these boys equally likable for different reasons. These two boys aren’t very fond of each other, and they aren’t fond of each other because they hate the other person’s character (you get the feeling that these two would actually get along very well with each other). No, the reason these two don’t like each other is the pure fact that they are both after the same girl. See, this is the stuff that women just eat up, and it’s nice to see the writers giving this sort of thing the attention a book like this requires in order to survive with the always delicate female audience. Another thing that is cool about “Spider-Girl” is that the writers have also chosen to keep certain key Spider-Man villains in this series while also adding some new characters to the mix. The old villains are definitely classics, and it’s nice to see them here, but the new villains are no slouch either. One downside to the series, though, is that since this IS a Marvel series there is no end in sight, which means that sometimes the story gets a little murky and starts to contradict itself sometimes, but I guess that is to be expected for a series like this! Also, I question if this series really deserves its “All Ages” rating, as some of the topics in this book are too mature for most kids under the age of 10.
Otherwise, though, I would have to say that “Spider-Girl” turned out to be a surprisingly good series...at least, much better then I expected it to be. This could have been better had this been a brand-new superhero instead of a female spin-off, but otherwise, a very good read. Now if only ALL the female superhero spin-off series could be as good as this one is!
- -Review By Kevin T. Rodriguez- -