"Spider-Girl! Spider-Girl!
Don't she make your little head twirl!
My little, brown-eyed Spider-Girl!
She does one heck of a spider twirl!
Hey there! There goes that Spider-Girl!"
- Page 25
Been going back and forth on purchasing this for years. Even when I finally decided to buy it, I wasn't expecting much. Read it, rate it, and move on, only occasionally remembering that it exists.
However, 'Spider-Girl: Legacy', for all its cliches, manages somehow to be a fun little comic regardless.
Set in Marvel Alternate Reality #1021, where Peter Parker and Mary-Jane Watson did live happily ever after (more or less), and have a daughter named May "Mayday" Parker. May is a high school teen who looks like a botox-overloaded Ruby Wax, thanks to the rather ugly artwork, but she's also a straight-A student, a basketball champion, and a quick-quipper and witter like her father. That's not the only thing she's inherited from him, either. She possesses the Spidey-sense and other powers, like super strength and agility, conveniently awakened once in high school (a lightning rod for superpower geneses and hero origin stories).
One night, to save her friends and parents from a Green Goblin descendant (there's a lot of them, apparently), May changes into the old famous costume and straps on the web cartridges of Spider-Man - whom she had just recently found out was her lawyer father, who quit the superhero life after a battle-to-the-death with one of the Green Goblins, losing his leg in the process. He chose to always be there for his new family after such a tragedy; both sides of his life are filled to the brim with great responsibilities on his shoulders.
Even after the Parker family burns any trace left of Spider-Man's legacy to keep May safely away from further superhero temptation, she fights crime secretly at night, taking up a lost mantel and earning the name Spider-Girl (she puts together a different, makeshift costume design at first). She grew up learning all about great power and great responsibility from her parents, and now that responsibility extends beyond her family and school life. This is through her choice alone, propelled by a sense of justice to protect innocents. And her loved ones.
Will the older and jaded Peter understand again what was once his in his youth, and willingly pass the torch? Will he come to accept his young daughter for who she wants to be, no matter how dangerous some choices are, the responsibility being hers? Well, this is May Parker as the Spider-hero here; this is her story, not his. Hypocritical parents are a given in these Generation X types of stories anyway, and at least Peter Parker is only a slightly better father than Harry Potter.
'Spider-Girl: Legacy' is kind of hackneyed and episodic in nature - hero juggling family and school drama with fighting bad guys who don't make much impact until the final issue - but that nature is a good one. The characters at play make it all seem fresh and exciting, even with some dated, cringe-worthy early-2000s dialogue. The comic is saturated, high-blood-sugar level, with fanservice by way of classic Spider-Man villains and Marvel heroes such as the Fantastic Four (the new generation Fantastic Five, here, where Reed Richards is a floating brain in a machine), and Daredevil (Darkdevil, here. Pretty lame, and, for all the potential he serves as Spider-Girl's nemesis and/or mentor, is ultimately inconsequential). It's a candy-coated style of fun, and given how pedestrian and mostly unappealing the artwork is, that's quite an accomplishment. There's a magic medallion that turns a man into a dragon in an issue, because of course they'd fit that in somewhere.
May Parker, once one gets used to her design that makes her look older than her parents, is a cool heroine to follow and want to see succeed. Despite some banter, witty lines, and awareness of her own limits and of the dangers of being a crime fighter, she's not too much like Peter that she's just a female version of her famous father. Personal, and relatable even if a young reader isn't so smart or a basketball player. She's athletic, and thinks on her feet: always a plus for a superheroine. Heck, she unashamedly crushes on more than one guy (or at least thinks they're cute, scrumptious even) like any teenager would.
Sadly, any challenge Spider-Girl faces in this run won't be the hardest thing that's ever happened to her: getting retconned out of existence years later will. Tragically typical for a superheroine; that this character and her story is destined to become pointless thanks to editorial mandates.
May's school friends are also surprisingly memorable, slowly but surely moving past their early-2000s nerd/jock dichotomy stereotypes. They aren't perfect, like May's hypocritical, occasional valley-girl-spoken best friend Davida, a person of colour, and that works in their favour for interest.
So yeah, 'Spider-Girl: Legacy' is dated and cheesy, but I enjoyed it. It can be touching and thoughtful throughout every issue, amidst the action-packed fun. Mary-Jane gets a few moments of her own to shine, too; a little relief from the stereotypical static, supportive mother/wife role.
I stayed up late to finish all of it, curled up in bed, never wanting to put it down after 1am. Another edition to my superheroine comic book collection.
Final Score: 3.5/5
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