Graphic Novel Review - 'The Amazing Spider-Girl, Volume 1: Whatever Happened to the Daughter of Spider-Man' by Tom DeFalco (Writer), Ron Frenz (Artist)

These 'Spider-Girl' comics really seem to be a guilty pleasure for me. It's just good old fashioned Bronze-Age-and-beyond superhero action and angst, but with a female hero at the celestial center.

May "Mayday" Parker - while there isn't anything particularly special or unique about her, at least compared to today's expectations of more nuanced and interesting characterisation, she still grew on me. She's smart, sporty, altruistic, contemplative, and tries to remain optimistic. She is all about responsibility and set priorities - that is, until her impulsiveness kicks in, and she has to save people from danger, when she'd committed to retiring as a superhero for a few months now. Great power, greater responsibility to use it for others when you can. Like father, like daughter indeed.

May is thoughtful towards her family and friends, and she's a women's shelter volunteer and a student council president candidate. Mostly she's a typical teenager from the early-to-mid 2000s. But there is nothing wrong with a young superheroine having flaws; like foolishness birthed from naivety and a too-trusting nature, and deriving the use of violence and aggression as a quick and easy solution to fighting crime.

'The Amazing Spider-Girl, Volume 1: Whatever Happened to the Daughter of Spider-Man' takes place after Tom DeFalco's original 'Spider-Girl' run, and there are a lot of things I missed - like May having a baby brother! - but I could get into it. There's a diary/scrapbook-like dossier at the end of the volume to keep readers up to date with everything that's happened with May as Spider-Girl, so that helps, too! Apropos of the comic, I could enjoy her new struggles and issues. Though I suspect they're not new at all - the 'Spider-Girl' comics might be continuously treading old ground over and over again. There are many, many characters with their own personal baggage to keep track of.

I will praise this comic for an improvement over the earliest 'Spider-Girl' volumes: May's schoolfriends have a much more prolonged and solid presence. They have definite, individual personalities, and May's relationships with them are clearer and more believable. I especially like Davida, Courtney, and Felicity Hardy (Felicia Hardy and Flash Thompson's daughter). Davida is a fantastic character, and a loyal best friend to May, who does consider telling her - and Courtney - that she's Spider-Girl (Felicity already knows - long story). Our Spider-Girl has several positive female bonds, and not just at school.

As smart and perceptive as May is, she is still a teenager who makes mistakes, and can't see that her jock boyfriend Gene (Felicia Hardy and Flash Thompson's son) is a gigantic prick (her Spidey-Sense can't make that out, sadly). She doesn't care that much about him, anyway, and they're bound to break up soon. Stereotypical mean girl Simone is trying to steal Gene away from May - which I actually support, since Simone and Gene deserve each other.

Mary Jane is a great, loving and funny mum, too. The mother-and-daughter relationship is shown to be just as if not more important than the father-and-daughter relationship (there's merely angst, overprotectiveness and secrecy on that end).

As good as May's female bonding is, however, I can't in good conscience label 'The Amazing Spider-Girl, Volume 1' as a feminist comic. There is a women's shelter, which is integral to the plot of the earlier issues, but then it disappears. The details surrounding it, and whether it's effective, are imprecise and very vague. May also has a strange way with female adversaries, and even other female crimefighters. Like, for some reason she won't hear of them being mentioned to her by male baddies - she makes a point of not liking that they're female. Is it a grudge? Territorialism? Or stereotypical girl-on-girl cattiness? She'll easily be goaded into "punching the lights out of" (her words) a villainous female metahuman - Bitter Frost - who is also an abuse victim. Spider-Girl's tunnel vision is unmovable, no matter how many times she's told by a women's help professional not to hurt Frost. Granted, this could be attributed to her bad temperament in general, and Bitter Frost is a murderer, and dangerous. But the female metahuman is nonetheless a victim; she's traumatised, and has lost all hope and is desperate for recompense. She's only taken care of at the end by losing her powers (temporarily? She's never seen again, so...) from being too close to fire (it's THAT simple!?), and she is carted off to hospital. Nobody had to do much - though at least Spider-Girl saves everyone involved from the burning building.

Our heroine is also too lenient when it comes to male antagonists and antiheroes. Comically so.

Regardless of its flaws - and there are plenty; don't get me started on the repetitions and few inconsistencies from issue to issue - 'The Amazing Spider-Girl, Volume 1' (I'm really not going to type out its long subtitle again) is a fun and geeky time to be had with a superhero comic. There are touching and introspective moments to go with the action and all-encompassing silliness. It's funny, in addition to everything else. 'Spider-Girl' is a classic, underappreciated and sadly forgotten series of Marvel's.

With that said, I won't be reading anymore. Because I know for a fact that this series will only get sillier, and bulldoze right into big fat "WTF, NO!" territory, as these comics unfortunately always do.

Woo! That's the end of my reading so many Marvel comics in barely a month. I'm surprised by how many I ended up liking.

This review marks my last for this year. Well, I tried. Sorry there's not much else I could add. I'm very tired. 2021's been...quite a year.

Final Score: 3.5/5

P.S. I like the comic's art better than its previous series run's, as well. For one, May actually looks like a teenager! For two, the action panels look cool. Spider-Girl looks amazing, or should I say sensational, nay, spectacular, as she fights bad guys.