Today, a very special Marvel series will come to an end (again). The current series, starring May “Mayday” Parker, ends an amazing run because Marvel has canceled Spider-Girl’s current series Amazing Spider-Girl #30. This will conclude the stand alone adventures of our favorite Alternate Reality heroine. Spider-Girl is the longest running series with a female lead that Marvel has ever published!

The character will live on in Spider-Man Amazing Family release, but honestly, who knows how long that will last for. For a character that started off as a What If story, I think she has come a long way. Her first appearance was in What If Volume 2 #105 released in 1998. For those of us who picked up that book when it hit the shelf, we knew right away that there was something different about this character. No one could have predicted that this character would have lasted for more than ten years after her initial appearance.

During the 90’s there was this thing called “The Clone Saga” where Marvel tried to convince us that Peter was a clone and that a clone was really Spider-Man. While this story was playing out we also learned that MJ was pregnant with a baby girl…who didn’t quite make it through the story. Peter and MJ were denied a daughter (and eventually their marriage). The House of Ideas then pitched the idea “What If they had their daughter and what if she grew up to have her father’s powers??!?!?” and with that May Parker became the Amazing Spider-Girl. May’s first adventure had her face the newest heir to the Green Goblin Legacy, Little Normie Osborn! Normie is all grown up and not happy to learn that Spider-Man was responsible for his dad and grandfather’s deaths. He sets out on a quest for revenge and May and the Parkers get caught in the crossfire. Normie eventually reforms and becomes one of May’s supporting cast along with Phil Urich (the 3rd Green Goblin), Felicity Hardy (daughter of Felicia Hardy and Flash Thompson), Jack Jameson (you can figure this one out), Kaine, and many more!

Now you might be asking yourself, “what happened to Peter?” and “why isn’t Peter Spider-Man anymore?” During his final battle with the original Goblin, Peter becomes injured and looses his leg during the fight. Peter has dedicated his life to his family and has determined that he will “never” sling webs again (yeah that doesn’t last too long…)

This original Spider-Girl issue was such a successful issue for that Marvel decided to create an entire Universe for the character called MC2. This new branding lead to the creation and eventual individual comic book releases of other future versions of classic teams and characters including A-Next (The Next Generation of the Avengers), the Fantastic Five, J2 (The Son of the Juggernaut) and others.

The Amazing Spider-Girl is the second volume of May’s stories, as she concluded an incredible run of 100 issues in Volume 1! The series was slated for the chopping block not once, not twice, but atleast three different times. By the time issue Volume 1, issue 60 came around and everyone thought that the book was over. They even did an issue rapping up stories just incase this was May’s final bow. Well issue 61 was a huge surprise and even sported the tagline “Spider-Girl: The Series They Couldn’t kill!” and then started a new storyline called “Marked For Death”. Nuff Said.

Well Marvel, I just wanted to say that I appreciate the fact that you let us have this character for as long as you did. It has been a great ride. This is coming from someone who bought every single issue of this series and was satisfied with EVERY SINGLE ISSUE of this series. You created such a strong, entertaining, and important female character with May and I am very happy to have spent my money on this book month after month. To Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz, I salute you. This couldn’t have been any better.

We at ComicsOnline hope that Spider-Girl will be back again in a full comic format, and not just as a backup story. May deserves better than that. If you missed out on any of May’s adventures we urge you to go out and find whatever back issues you can. At a time when Spider-Man books were not at their best, this one stood tall and stay consistent issue after issue. Don’t miss out on this character…because we haven’t seen the last of her.