Heroes for the '90s! #32: February 1998

Who is Spider-Girl?

What If... #105

Writer: Tom DeFalco
Penciller: Ron Frenz

Inker: Bill Sienkiewicz 
Colorist: Matt Webb

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With the Spider-Verse all the rage these days, there's one very important Spider character still waiting for her moment in the cinematic sun: May "Mayday" Parker, daughter of Peter and Mary Jane Parker.

Spider-Girl's story is a fascinating one, both on and off the page. She debuted in early 1998 in the pages of What If..., a book that had seen much better days, and in fact was less than a year away from cancellation. She would go on to headline a small imprint of titles set in the same universe, a title that would last in various incarnations for 12 years and nearly 150 issues.

Spider-Girl was the brainchild of former Marvel editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco. DeFalco had been dismissed from his position - which he'd held since 1987 - in 1994 under somewhat cloudy circumstances. Whatever happened exactly, he remained friendly with the powers-that-be. As a writer he had worked on Fantastic Four and Thor books throughout his tenure as head of the company, but he was most closely associated with Spider-Man, whom he wrote before and after being editor-in-chief, and whom he helped navigate through the famous black costume saga and the infamous clone saga.

His partner-in-art was Ron Frenz, with whom he had worked on both Spider-Man and Thor. Frenz was a Pennsylvania native who had leveraged his style - a boffo combination of Jack Kirby, John Romita, and John Buscema - into a solid career at Marvel. Though he never became a superstar, his work had power and clarity.

Following their run on the Thor spin-off title, Thunderstrike, Frenz went to work on the Superman books at DC. But the chance to work with DeFalco again lured him back to Marvel and What If...#105.

What If stories are notoriously tragic, likely because creators revel in the opportunity to write tales with actual definitive consequesnces. By contrast, DeFalco and Frenz took a world-building approach. 

They quickly and efficiently establish the emergence of May's powers, her discovery of her father's past, and her first big challenge (the Green Goblin). They also set up the family dynamic between May, Peter, and Mary Jane, and DeFalco drew from his past at Archie Comics to depict May's life in high school, where she's torn between her nerdy friend group and her popular friend group.

The story also introduces the elements of the larger Marvel Unvierse in which May resides, including the Fantastic Five and a group of young, unfamiliar Avengers. And the story ended with a tantalizing "The End?" DeFalco revealed to Wizard that he and Frenz treated What If... #105 as a "pilot episode", though they didn't have any delusions about it being picked up as a series.

But reaction to the issue was overwhelmingly positive. It sold out immediately, and fans clamored to see more of Spider-Girl. So that October saw Spider-Girl in her own title as part of a line of comics called MC2. The other books were J2, about the son of the X-Men antagonist Juggernaut, and A-Next, about a new generation of Avengers. Spider-Girl was written by DeFalco, with art by Patrick Oliffe, who was late of acclaimed Untold Tales of Spider-Man book, which was set during the Lee and Ditko years of Amazing Spider-Man. This was a fitting pedigree, as the first couple of years of Spider-Girl took most of its cues from those Lee/Ditko masterpieces, placing May in opposition to a bevy of odd heroes and villains, and dealing with her effots to hide her life as a superhero (Peter hid it from Aunt May, May is hiding it from Peter).

While DeFalco and Oliffe channeled the spirits of Spider-Man's creators on Spider-Girl, DeFalco and  Frenz evoked the Lee and Kirby energy of early Fantastic Four and Avengers comics for A-Next. In the MC2 world, the Avengers have disbanded after a terrible battle that left the original team severely depleted. But when a threat arises (involving, of course, Loki), a new group of heroes joins together to fight it. The book was my personal favorite for the way it balanced action and character moments, nodded to both past and future, and never stopped evolving. 

Frenz loved it too. In a 2020 interview, he remarked: "I would say that A-Next is probably the most wildly enjoyably creative period that I've ever had, professionally, in comics." 

It might seem ironic that Tom DeFalco, who steered Marvel through the height of 1990s excess, was responsible for a line of throwback books aimed at younger readers and focused on a bright and optimistic future. But DeFalco the editor and DeFalco the writer were always two separate beasts. While he cheered on the multiple-embossed-polybagged-holographic cover era, he was also writing Thor and Fantastic Four in a decidedly classic manner.

DeFalco's devotion to the Silver Age hit different in the late 1990s. Marvel was still recovering from its 1996 bankruptcy filing, and the publisher was trying to find a direction forward. Spider-Girl and the MC2 titles shared shelf space with the acclaimed Marvel Knights rebranding, an edgy approach to characters like Daredevil and Black Panther that was so successful it vaulted co-creator Joe Quesada to the top editorial spot at Marvel. The titles also ran concurrent with the debut of the Ultimate universe, which reimagined Marvel's biggest properties from the ground up.

The MC2 got lost in this noise, and Spider-Girl was the only of the three MC2 titles that sold even moderately well. A-Next and J2 were cancelled and replaced by Fantastic Five and Wild Thing, both of which only made it to issue #5. A year and a half in, Spider-Girl stood as the only survior of the MC2. 

As the book went on, DeFalco didn't change much about his approach, though it became clear that in some ways he was using Spider-Girl as a mea culpa for the clone saga (1994-1996), which was one of those excesses of DeFalco's editor-in-chief reign. May's costume come from there, as did supporting characters Kaine and Darkdevil.

Spider-Girl ended up running for an impressive five years - steered the entire time by DeFalco and Oliffe - before Marvel decided to pull the plug. Frenz came back for issue #60 to help DeFalco tell what would have been the character's final tale, but an outcry from the book's small-but-fierce fanbase led Marvel to reverse the decision. 

The title ran for another five years (relaunched as The Amazing Spider-Girl from  2006 to 2008) under DeFalco and Frenz. In that same time, DeFalco and various collaborators returned to the MC2 via miniseries such as Last Planet Standing and Avengers Next.

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Since the end of her title, Spider-Girl has appeared sporadically, notably as part of Dan Slott's Spider-Verse storyline that inspired the films. And this gives me hope that we'll get to see Mayday in the final film of the trilogy.

But even if we don't, Spider-Girl and the MC2 stand as a noble effort to break the fever dream of the 1990s.

Sources

• Brady, Matthew. "Spider-Girl Spins Into New Marvel Branch." Wizard the Comics Magazine #84. August 1998. 
• Grand, Alex and Jim Thompson. "Ron Frenz Interview, Marvelous Comic Artist." April 1, 2020. Comic Book Historians. https://comicbookhistorians.com/ron-frenz-marvelous-comic-artist/
• Morrison, Ruth. "Start the Marvelution Without Me." Hero Illustrated #23. May 1995.
• Orlando, Greg. "The Wizard Q & A: Tom DeFalco." Wizard the Comics Magazine #92. April 1999.