|
|
|
||||||||
MARY JANE-A REVIEW
What do you call a Spider Man book that isn’t a Spider Man book? A teen romance tale that owes more of it’s origin to an episode of LIZZIE MCGUIRE than it does to Uncle Ben and Aunt May. MARY JANE is a new Marvel “All Ages” title from Sean McKeever and Tak Miyazawa that seems designed to build that untapped market of comics fans which has never been catered too in the last 30 years or so: the pre and post pubescent teenage girl.Mary Jane Watson is your average teenage girl. She reads teen magazines. She talks on the phone to her best friend Liz Allen(who is dating Flash Thompson). She dreams of dating Harry Osborn. She talks about what she’ll wear to the Homecoming Dance. Typical teen stuff spoken in “typical” teen dialogue.
And then she has her life saved by a well known superhero in red and blue tights and her whole world changes. How drastic is the change? She goes from dreaming of dating Harry Osborn to dreaming of having Spidey as her Homecoming date, DESPITE the fact that Harry is pursuing her. Well, if you’re going to live those dreams, you need a job. And when you get fired from that one, you move on. And on. And on. And life gets more complicated when she discovers that Flash Thompson secretly has a crush on her. What will a poor teenage girl do?
And that, in a nutshell, sums up the first few issues of this series. Please note: the book isn’t called MARY JANE: SPIDER MAN’S MAIN SQUEEZE for a reason. In fact, Peter Parker makes two very brief appearances in issue #1 for a grand total of 7 panels. And Spider Man, in the midst of a battle with Electro, shows up for 6 pages. The book is about a present day, teenage Mary Jane Watson and her life and loves. It is truly a book directly aimed a teen girls, much like the two text heavy hardcovers from last year were. Taking that into account, Sean McKeever, who really blew me away with his characterization and dialogue on THE INHUMANS, does a tremendous job with the writing, peppering it with true teenage angst and some really snappy dialogue. And Tak Miyazawa does that Manga thing with great finesse in both his style and story pacing.
Stripped down to its’ core, this is a great and fun read. But it’s appeal is extremely limited in scope. It wallows in being a romance tale for the new millennium instead of what it COULD have been. Marvel gets tremendous credit from me for actually introducing an “ALL AGES” line, even if most of that line is rehashed SPIDER MAN and FANTASTIC FOUR tales from the Silver Age(although I do take umbrage to the “inspired by” credits in those books. Let’s be honest: if it wasn’t for those people who “inspired” these tales, there wouldn’t BE any tales!). But once again, it appears that the marketing geniuses believe the only comic which could interest a young female reader is a variation on the romance theme. It would be nice if, for just once, publishers were able to tap into the minds of female readers and figure out WHAT would bring them into shops. Most teen girls I know(having co-workers and relatives who qualify) would rather be watching THE N, not picking up a comic.
But I digress(I’m sorry...doesn’t Peter David own that line?).
If this book DOES bring female readers into the comic shops of America, that’s a good thing. If it actually gets teenage girls to read and explore the genre, that’s a good thing. Unfortunately I see it as a book which will have trouble finding a hard-core audience and will quickly fade away.