The Cobweb of Spider-Girl

Just in case you haven't been keeping track of how many Spider-People are swinging around over at Marvel right now, there's like eleven. With the event "Spider-Verse" spinning new Spider-Women into their own titles, I wanted to backtrack to an earlier web slinger, this week's Z-Lister Mattie Franklin/Spider-Woman.

Mattie first appeared in "The Amazing Spider-Man #441" in 1998, Mattie grew up in New York City with her father who worked with Norman Osborn. Her father was asked to appear at Osborn's "Gathering of Five" but she took his place and was endowed with artificial superpowers that Osborn had intended on using on himself. Something to do with spider DNA and cloning. Even before gaining powers similar to Spider-Man, Mattie had an interest in the wall-crawler that became an obsession and an infatuation. During a time when Peter Parker was trying to retire, Mattie actually posed as the new Spider-Man by using her new powers and a costume that'd make her look masculine. After the real Spider-Man returned she became Spider-Woman, but ends up fighting other Spider-Women like Charlotte Witter, Jessica Drew and Madame Web. Witter attempted to absorb Mattie's powers, but this backfired and infused Mattie with the powers of the other Spider-Women, making her the only one.

Mattie moves in with her father's friends J. Jonah Jameson and Marla Jameson because her father was always too busy working to be home.

This is a Spider-Man character so JJ needs to involved in some way. During this time Mattie's absorbed powers return to their respective owners, which meant Drew's toxic immunity was unable to save Mattie Franklin from being slipped a date rape drug. A low-level drug dealer used Mattie's special spider-blood to produce a Mutant Growth Hormone which endowed regular humans with superpowers. The dealer kept Mattie under psychoactive drugs to keep her from escaping. Mattie was saved by former superhero/private detective Jessica Jones and his returned to the Jameson Family.
After counseling to rid her of her drug dependency, Mattie tracked down the dealers to LA and joined a teen superhero support group called The Loners. These youngsters attended this group to help them live without being superheroes, but Mattie planned on lying to the group and recruiting members Darkhawk and Ricochet, together they tried to bust the MGH ring in LA. There's also an unexplained B-plot to this story in which Mattie joined The Loners in order to learn the location of The Slingers, an obscure team of Spider-People and a team Ricochet formally worked with. In snooping around Mattie slept with Ricochet to keep him quiet and after Phil Urich and Chris Powell fought over the Darkhawk suit, Mattie decided to quit the team, claiming they took no pride in being superheroes. "Pride" isn't a word I'd associate with Mattie at this point. Mattie was later the first victim of a resurrection ritual to revive Vladimir Kravinoff, son of Kraven The Hunter. That was anti-climactic.

It would seem this character was created with the implication that she'd be instantly popular, obviously she had a small group of fans based on what she'd later become. A druggy, a liar, a sacrifice, its a real shame this Spider-Woman fell so hard especially now as we see characters like Spider-Gwen and Silk bloom their own more dignified stories. I'm not at all shocked this temporarily cool 90's character didn't translate, this is but another case of Marvel either steamrolling their lesser known characters rather than killing them off or ignoring them. It's almost as if the popularity of other Spider-Women hindered Mattie's image. Whatever the case, this Z-Lister remains to show us readers that no matter how tall the high-rise, the fall can still kill you. I hope Gwen doesn't consider that in bad taste. Thanks for reading!

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