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Amazing Spider-Girl #18
Posted 26 Mar 2008
Writer: Tom DeFalco (script and co-plot)
Artist: Ron Frenz (pencils and co-plot)
Letters: Dave Sharpe
Ink: Sal Buscema
Colors: Bruno Hang, Impacto Studios
Publisher: Marvel
5.00 out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by Adam McGovern
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For a book about youth and impulsiveness, Spider-Girl sure
is a lesson in longevity and wisdom. Limited runs drive the market
these days — not just miniseries in an industry where boundaries
have to be set for short attention spans and fickle finances, but also
at-most yearlong turns by any one creative team on books that go
forever, so as to give packagability to graphic novels and rotate the
market magic of successful teams to other titles. This can give a
satisfying artistic completeness to the timespan; rather than
suspending a good thing before it starts, it can make storytellers
tighten their structure, deepen their characters and concentrate their
ideas. But Spider-Girl is a study in how well-shaped and
surprising an ongoing series can be.
“DeFalco, Frenz and Buscema use
the time to build a novelistic texture to their characters’
personalities and the bumpy arc of their true-to-life
experiences.”
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It may be because the several-times cancellation-bound (but
always-rescued) book’s creators don’t take forever for
granted, but even if they had 100 issues contractually guaranteed,
this would be the way to make a comic worth reading; DeFalco, Frenz
and Buscema use the time to build a novelistic texture to their
characters’ personalities and the bumpy arc of their
true-to-life experiences. At this point (counting a title-change and
renumbering) Tom DeFalco has written 117 of the last 118 regular
issues, longer than Stan Lee spent on Spider-Man (and longer
than any other female-headlined title has lasted at the Marvel
Men’s Club), with, like Stan, two defining art teams (first Pat
Oliffe & Al Williamson, and currently Ron Frenz & Sal
Buscema). The unheard-of sales of the digest collections through
Scholastic, and the activist fanbase that has saved the regular comic
several times, show that this creative braintrust may be classic, but
is in no way unfashionable.
In any case freshness is a given in this back-to-the-future book,
since it extends the anything-can-happen ethic of Marvel in its first
two decades, with a mature and retired Peter Parker, a settled-down
yet still-dynamic Mary Jane (remember her?), and their burdened yet
optimistic daughter in a world of many changes but wide-open
possibility (“Brand New Day”’s pop-art positivity
owes a big debt to this book). May “Mayday” Parker,
popular and well-adjusted in a way her dad never was, is not just a
refreshing change from the dourness that defined the old book, but an
interesting metaphor for the nervous-breakdown generation of
success-obsessed kids; Peter & MJ may not have had her doctoral
college picked out since she was in nursery school like many yuppie
couples, but May’s puberty-triggered powers multiply her turmoil
about how to please her parents and peers, do the right thing and be
herself.
This issue is not any particular landmark, and that’s the
point; crack open a Spider-Girl of almost any number and
you’ll find, as here, ingeniously entwined plotlines and
parallel situations, unexpected switches in incident and behavior, and
affecting characterization. In this case, we have the nuanced (if
irredeemable) Ditko-costumed stealth-tech assassin Deadspot, trading
gallows repartee with Spider-Girl while sensibly sticking to her
job-description to kill someone else; the fearsomely portrayed
Hobgoblin, allying with our heroine in a betrayal of convenience
against various assembled mob rivals; a ticking clock as May’s
little brother undergoes an operation she can’t show up for due
to a detour for the family business; and some high-school courtship
soap opera with a skillfully staged missed connection among two
romantic rivals for her when May finally makes it to the hospital.
Every 15 issues or so a plot-point may not add up or a finale will
fall flat, but that’s a better ratio than the longrunning weekly
TV shows that Spider-Girl most resembles in structure and
longevity. Tune in, and you’ll find the book matches many of
those in enduring appeal and importance too.
—CCdC—
Cover image used without explicit permission in accordance with the "Fair Use" provision of US copyright law.
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