First Look: The New Spider-Girl Is Less Sexed-Up, More Kick-Ass

“Not every fight can get resolved by punching someone in the face…but Spider-Girl’s gonna punch somebody anyway, just to make sure.” A new Spider-Girl hits stores next week. Here, advance images and a Marvel writer on writing multidimensional female characters.

Anya “Arañita” Sofia Corazon already existed in the Marvel universe, but is now officially rebranded as Spider Girl. She’s the daughter of a Brooklyn investigative journalist, no relation to Peter Parker.

The last character called Spider-Girl was May “Mayday” Parker. The second line of her Wikipedia entry reads, “May ‘Mayday’ Parker is a cute and attractive 16 year old.” Writer Paul Tobin explains was “from a separate Marvel continuity… one slightly in the future, where she’s the daughter of Peter (I’m Spider-Man!) Parker and Mary Jane Watson.” He added, “Sometimes it’s time to explore new characters and set off a few new explosions.”

The new Spider-Girl is also explicitly being marketed as being an empowering figure that isn’t aggressively sexualized, as many mainstream female comic characters are. “Anya pretty much is a normal sixteen year old girl. She doesn’t have any powers of any kind, beyond being highly athletic and having undergone combat training at the hands of some Marvel’s best fighters,” Tobin says. “When I was growing up there were so few well-written female characters in comics (and most other media) and that bothered me. It definitely was all about the sexuality, rather than the individuality, and I’m now proud to be a writer during a time in comics when a lot of writers, both male and female, are putting those old one-dimensional writing styles to rest.” Is it too much to hope for Spider-Girl to get her own movie franchise?