Saturday, October 12, 2024

Saturday Splash Page #146

 
"A Happy Sendoff", in Spider-Girl: The End, by Tom DeFalco (writer), Ron Frenz (writer/penciler), Sal Buscema (finished art), Bruno Hang and Sotocolor (colorists), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

"The End" was a loose group of comics Marvel did that were essentially the "final" story for a given character or group. The ones in the early 2000s were mini-series. One for the FF, one for Wolverine, 3 for the X-Men, one for the entire Marvel Universe (written by Starlin, so of course Thanos was responsible.) There were some one-shots in the mid-to-late 2000s. Marvel apparently revived it for 4 or 5 books in 2020, but I only learned that researching this post. 

To my knowledge, the best-regarded is Garth Ennis and Richard Corben's Punisher: The End, which basically says Frank Castle would never stop killing criminals, even if said criminals are the last humans left.

Spider-Girl: The End is 180 degrees from that book. Unsurprising, given the respective creative teams. Set after the strips in Amazing Spider-Man Family, Web of Spider-Man (vol. 3), and the 4-issue Spectacular Spider-Girl mini-series (which we'll see next month), we're told the story of how Spider-Girl died by a kindly old woman talking to a bunch of kids in what looks like an idyllic paradise.

The clone/symbiote hybrid, April Reilly, is still after Mayday to admit April's the original, as well as the better hero. They fight, a fire starts, May pushes her sister clear of falling debris, then is able to launch her clear of the explosion via impact webbing. As it turns out, the old lady is April, and we learn (though the kids don't), she tried to take May's place, but their little brother Benjy immediately knew she wasn't May, which tipped of MJ. April flipped, went full "lethal protector", to the point the government combined mercs with Carnage symbiotes, and civilization went down the crapper.

April gets a chance to go back and change things, and does, in the process tying off her own storyline. May returns home, unaware of the near miss, Wes, who had been circling as a possible love interest for a while, drops by and reveals he knows she's Spider-Girl, and that's where the issue ends. An actual happy ending!

Obviously, that wasn't going to last. . .

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