Who is Spider-Girl? What If... #105 Writer: Tom DeFalco Penciller: Ron Frenz Inker: Bill Sienkiewicz Colorist: Matt Webb * With the Spider-Verse all the rage these days, there's one very important Spider character still waiting for her moment in the cinematic sun: May "Mayday" Parker, daughter of Peter and Mary Jane Parker. Spider-Girl's story is a fascinating one, both on and off the page. She debuted in early 1998 in the pages of What If... , a book that had seen much better days, and in fact was less than a year away from cancellation. She would go on to headline a small imprint of titles set in the same universe, a title that would last in various incarnations for 12 years and nearly 150 issues. Spider-Girl was the brainchild of former Marvel editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco. DeFalco had been dismissed from his position - which he'd held since 1987 - in 1994 under somewhat cloudy circumstances. Whatever happened exactly, he remained friendly with the powers-that-
A Nearly Perfect First Issue Thunderbolts #1 (April 1997) Writer: Kurt Busiek Penciller: Mark Bagley Inker: Vince Russell Colorist: Joe Rosas * Superhero comic books promise "an ending that will shock you!" all the time, but rarely do they deliver. Just over a quarter of a century ago, Thunderbolts #1 presented readers with a twist that still stands as one of the most genuinely surprising final pages in all of comic book history. It was a surprise that wasn't just a clever bit of plotting, it was a bait-and-switch of the entire concept of the book. Thunderbolts was presented in the pre-release hype as a team of brand-new heroes who would be stepping in to fill the void filled by the apparent deaths of the Avengers and Fantastic Four at the hands of a villain called Onslaught. (At the risk of curtailing my momentum, I'll pause her to share that Onslaught was the in-story explanation for the awful one-year "reboot" of the Avengers, Captain America, Fantastic