Amazing Spider-Girl #5

February 11, 2007

Quick Rating: Good
Title: Priorities
Rating: A

On the day of her big debate, Mayday and Mad Dog get called back into action!

Writer: Tom DeFalco
Pencils: Ron Frenz
Inks: Sal Buscema
Colors: Gotham
Letters: Dave Sharpe
Editor: Molly Lazer
Cover Art: Ron Frenz
Publisher: Marvel Comics

After her last encounter with Mad Dog, the reality show bounty hunter, Mayday is looking forward to a relatively normal day at school… at least, as normal as she can get on the day of her big debate for the Student Council President election. Problem is, it seems nobody is happy with her – her best friend and campaign manager Davida thinks she’s not spending enough time on the campaign. Her boyfriend Gene Thompson thinks she’s spending too much time there. And of course, her parents don’t know she’s been spending her nights out as Spider-Girl again.

As always seems to happen to those Parkers, danger rears its head just when she really needs to be somewhere else, and she winds up fighting alongside Mad Dog again. I really do enjoy stories like this one – it’s these tales where Spider-Girl most feels like the early, classic Lee/Ditko Spider-Man tales. Mayday’s got so much in common with her father that any longtime fan of the Spider-Family should get pulled right along and enjoy this.

Personality-wise, May is Peter’s daughter as well. The solution she comes to at the end is quite simple, and while I’m not sure that the paperwork involved in most high schools would actually allow such a thing, I’m willing to suspend that disbelief for the purposes of the story because it really is a very in-character, very elegant way to tie off one of our subplots.

The artwork suffers a bit in this issue, particularly in the fight scene. Mad Dog’s gimmick is that he arms himself with weapons he (supposedly) confiscates from the villains he’s captured, so having a varied arsenal is perfectly logical, but the artwork simply doesn’t flow. Weapons appear and disappear completely between panels – and I don’t mean small things that could simply be tucked into a pocket, I’m talking about giant apparatuses like Stilt-Man’s legs or the Beetle’s sucker-tipped gauntlets, things that don’t appear particularly collapsible, but pop in and out regardless. It really pulls the reader out of the scene when he has to start asking, “Wait, where did that come from?”

So this issue has its faults with the artwork, but the story fortunately carries the day.

Rating: 7/10