Fanfic / Ultimate Spider-Woman

An offshoot of Ultimate Sleepwalker, Ultimate Spider-Woman: Change With the Light stars Mary Jane Watson as the title heroine, with no connection to Jessica Drew as a female clone of Peter Parker.

Mary Jane Watson seemingly has it all: wealth, beauty, and popularity. Unfortunately, much of it is a facade, behind which she hides an abusive home life and a deep hatred for her biological father. When she begins mysteriously developing bizarre, spider-like powers, Mary Jane assumes she is a mutant whose powers have begun to manifest themselves. Remembering all too well her father's feelings toward mutants, and inspired by the superheroes who have become more and more common in the world, Mary Jane creates a costume of her own and becomes the mysterious Spider-Woman, ostensibly for no better reason than to spite her father. What begins as an act of teenage rebellion, however, soon becomes much more as Mary Jane begins questioning why she became a costumed heroine, and the increasingly important role it has in her life.

Set in the same universe as Ultimate Sleepwalker, Ultimate Spider-Woman came about in part because of Jared's attempting to subvert the traditional expectations of Spider-Man fans and make Gwen Stacy Peter Parker's one true love. Eventually, he came up with the idea of doing a spider-themed series with Mary Jane as the star. The series ended up going in an entirely new direction, particularly about the nature of identity and how people step into different roles at different times.

The series started in 2008, and concluded in July 2022 after 98 issues, eight Annuals, four Halloween Specials and one crossover.

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This fanfic provides examples of:

Tropes A–K

• Action Girl: As Spider-Woman, Mary Jane both gives and takes her lumps the way any male hero would.
• Adaptational Badass: A staple of the series.
  • Mary Jane Watson goes from everywoman love interest/damsel in distress to a superheroine in her own right.
  • Villains that are C- and D-list background fodder in the comics are given a chance to shine here.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: Done with both with Spider-Woman (who has a modified version of Jessica Drew's pheromones that function as a sort of spider-tracer, as well organic webbing to go along with Jessica's Hand Blasts), other heroes (the X-Man Thunderbird was a Flying Brick in the comics, but has Shock and Awe powers to differentiate himself from his super-strong brother Warpath) and many of the villains (the Crimson Commando's powers effectively stopped his aging process and let him stay at peak capacity even as an old man in the comics, but this version of the Commando has Power Copying allowing her to duplicate other people's physical skills, much like Marvel Comics: Taskmaster.)
• Adaptational Villainy: Felicia Hardy is much nastier than her comic counterpart.
• Adaptational Wimp: Roderick Kingsley, since he's not the Hobgoblin and is just a Smug Snake relying on his wealth.
• Adaptation Species Change:
  • Of sorts-the Chameleon is here recast as a blue-skinned mutant, the brother of long-time X-Men foe Mystique.
  • In the comics, Spiral was a human woman who was abducted by an alien from another dimension who gave her four cybernetic arms, magical powers and made her Brainwashed and Crazy. In this series, Spiral is a mutant whose six arms form part of her mutation.
  • In the comics, Marvel Comics: Taskmaster has "photographic reflexes", which allow him to mimic other people's physical feats. The comics don't really explain how he has this ability, but this series explicitly describes him as a mutant whose power is his photographic reflexes. His sister shares those abilities, and she uses them as this universe's Crimson Commando as part of her Adaptational Superpower Change.
• Affably Evil: Well, the Constrictor isn't exactly nice, but when he sees that Spider-Woman is a teenage university student he advises her to consider just why she had decided to become a costumed heroine in the first place, pointing out that the super-powered world is far more dangerous than she probably initially thought.
• The Aggressive Drug Dealer: A particularly subtle version of this trope occurs with Mad Scientist Dr. Karl Malus, who was hired by the Kingpin to lace the drugs he sells with special chemicals that make the drugs so addictive that the users will literally die if they don't take them.
• A Good Name for a Rock Band: Mary Jane, Liz and Kitty attend an Empire State University music festival featuring student bands with such names as Three Dice Night, Undead Boxcars, the Shooting Stars, the Waters of Sylph and Vintage Brokenhead.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Netshape became a supervillain to develop a badass reputation as a way of attracting women. Spider-Woman, for one, isn't impressed.
• All Women Love Shoes:
  • Very much so when it comes to Mary Jane, who just can't resist splurging on a pair of Ugg boots, despite her limited finances. She owns various assorted boots, platforms, high heels, sandals, ballet flats and about eighteen pairs of Converse sneakers.
  • Mary Jane's girlfriends share her love of footwear too, something lampshaded by Ben Reilly when Kitty tells him that Mary Jane owns almost as many pairs of Converse as she does.
• Alpha Bitch: Felicia Hardy. Let's just say she and Mary Jane don't get along and leave it at that.
• Alternate Universe Fic: Earth-2706 is an alternate version of the Marvel Universe of Jared's own creation.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Chapter 108 has Mary Jane take some time off to recover from Jack O' Lantern sending her a threatening note, and Peter Parker gets the superhero focus for said chapter.
• And the Adventure Continues: Issue #98 concludes with Randy and Mary Jane on their way to lunch, but Mary Jane is forced to suit up as Spider-Woman because of a crime happening a couple of blocks away.
• "Angry Black Man" Stereotype: Subverted by Randy Robertson. He's not so much angry as passionate and committed to increasing awareness of the many social and artistic contributions that black people have made in the U.S. over the years. All he wants from white people is to make them more aware of the influence blacks have had on the country's development.
• Arch-Enemy: Jack O'Lantern is Spider-Woman's most prominent and personal foe.
• Ascended Fangirl: Elaine Coll, alias Scorpia, identifies herself as a particularly sick and twisted supervillain fangirl who chose to emulate one of her personal heroes-Mac Gargan, alias the Scorpion.
• At Least I Admit It: Jason Phillip Macendale is a Dirty Cop, but at least he admits to being a corrupt bastard...unlike the self-serving anti-mutant bigots who wrap themselves in motherhood and apple pie to justify the shit they pull on innocent mutants.
• Attractiveness Isolation: Subverted in that it was deliberately cultivated by Mary Jane in high school to keep anyone from getting too close to her. Even now, she's still having a hard time deciding between Ben Reilly, Randy Robertson and Mark Raxton, and one reviewer has suggested that Mary Jane still has this problem.
• Author Appeal: Mary Jane has several character traits that the author finds attractive in women.
• Ax-Crazy: Boomerang, Bullseye, Firebrand, Jack O' Lantern, Supercharger and the Brothers Grimm all qualify.
• Badass Native: The X-Men Warpath and Thunderbird are both Apaches and badasses.
• The Bad Guy Wins:
  • Jack O'Lantern's Evil Plan works out just as he'd hoped, with Spider-Woman defeated and the Maggia weakened enough for him to destroy it, thereby establishing his reputation as a major player in the criminal underworld. Now, he can put his true plan into action...
  • The yuppie crime boss Crimewave hires Boomerang to kill an ex-girlfriend who's trying to blackmail him. Spider-Woman manages to defeat Boomerang, but not before he successfully kills the girlfriend. The issue ends with Crimewave wiring Boomerang's fee to his account as a satisfied customer.
• Bad Influencer: Joystick starts livestreaming her crimes and even her trials, in between showing how she spends the proceeds of her crimes and showcasing the terrified reaction of her victims.
• Bad Liar: Zigzagged by Mary Jane. She's become very good at concealing her secret identity from people she doesn't want to know about it, but when she's under a lot of stress or pressure she often has a hard time fully concealing it. Characters ranging from Liz Allan to Ben Reilly to Martha Robertson to Ben Parker have all seen through her denials like a screen door when she tries to tell them that nothing is wrong.
• Ballroom Blitz: Mary Jane is at a high-class party with Ben Reilly when Jack O' Lantern attacks it, hoping to rob and murder the party guests.
• Bash Brothers: The X-Men Thunderbird and Warpath are brothers, and frequently fight alongside each other.
• Bat Deduction: As this trope is one of the author's pet peeves, the text will sometimes pause to specifically explain how a given plan will actually work, how a character figured something out, and so forth.
• Beach Episode: Mary Jane, Kitty, and Liz go to Fire Island in issue #22, accompanied by Harry and Kong. One year later (in-story), they go on another trip, this time to Daytona Beach in Florida, in issue #49. Randy accompanies them this time, since by this time he's become Mary Jane's boyfriend.
• Beauty Contest: On a trip to Daytona Beach over Spring Break, Mary Jane enters the Miss Spring Break beauty pageant. She wins the contest and gets $50,000, which she plans to use to help pay off the back taxes her mother owes to the IRS because of her father's tax cheating.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Despite being punched, burned, cut, electrocuted, strangled and gassed at various points in the series, Mary Jane never suffers any scars or blemishes.
• Being Good Sucks: Spider-Woman is definitely aware of this.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Jack O'Lantern comes very close when he tortures Spider-Woman with More than Mind Control. However, she just barely manages to overcome it.
• Beneath the Mask: Subverted by Jack O'Lantern, who in fact dons his costume so he can display his true personality. He claims that the actual masks are the civilized facades people put up because they don't want to reveal what they're really thinking, or what they really want to do. Jack's well aware of the irony in wearing a mask to reveal his true face, but he considers himself superior to the pathetic, mindless sheep and cattle that make up most of the rest of society because he's willing to embrace just what he really is.
• Berserk Button: Mary Jane hates being seen as The Brainless Beauty, and is trying to land serious, intelligent acting roles that will let her make full use of her talents. Unfortunately, this has been exploited by people who deliberately set her off and make her blow auditions.
• Big Applesauce: Subverted to a certain extent. Although the series is set in New York City, Jared usually tends to treat it as Generic Big City, U.S.A. There are usually only vague indications as to what part of New York a given sequence is actually taking place in, given that Jared's never actually been there.
• Big Damn Heroes: One possible reason why Spider-Man doesn't resent Spider-Woman taking his moniker is because she once saved his hide when Boomerang and Bullseye had him dead to rights.
• The Big Rotten Apple: New York City is a crime-ridden cesspool, and is as bad as it's ever been. Rudy Giluani's failure to reduce the city's crime rate is the reason J. Jonah Jameson became hellbent on destroying his attempt for the Republican presidential nomination.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Mary Jane is this with her closest friends, serving as the Redhead to Liz's Blonde and Kitty's Brunette.
• Boom Stick: Ms. Fortune wields a quarterstaff that shoots energy blasts.
• Born Unlucky: Mary Jane is pretty much the Butt-Monkey of Earth-2706. Peter Parker, on the other hand, seems well on his way to getting a well-paying job as a research chemist after he graduates, for all the other smaller headaches he has to deal with. Along with all the other headaches she runs into while trying to balance her superhero career with her civilian life, the clearest example of just how utterly bad Mary Jane's luck can get is the fact that, purely by coincidence, she became Jack O' Lantern's Arch-Enemy.
• Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: Gender Flipped with Ben Reilly's father Andrew, who loathes Mary Jane and isn't shy about letting her know that. He bluntly warns her to stay away from his son, before threatening to make her life miserable if she doesn't listen to him. Ben is not pleased when he hears about this.
• Brainwash Residue: Spider-Woman was quickly overwhelmed by Black Mamba's power when the evil hypnotist created an image of Randy to attack Spider-Woman. Now, Mary Jane is having trouble getting that image of Randy out of her head, as what it said brought back some rather painful memories.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Elaine Coll's childhood hobbies growing up were watching The Simpsons, dancing to Britney Spears music and writing love letters to guys like Ted Bundy and Cletus Kasady.
• Break-In Threat: Jack O' Lantern does this to Mary Jane as part of his plan to destroy her sense of self.
• Break the Cutie:
  • Kitty Pryde gets this trope in spades after being publicly outed as a mutant.
  • This trope is the story of Mary Jane's life. She's gone through this repeatedly ever since she was a little kid.
• Broken Bird: Poor, poor Maddie Watson...at least at first. It's later subverted when she starts getting the help she needs and repays Mary Jane for everything her daughter's gone through to help her. It also turns into a case of Like Mother, Like Daughter when Character Development helps Mary Jane overcome many of her own personal issues.
• Busman's Holiday: Much to Mary Jane's displeasure, her trip to Fire Island is interrupted by Polestar. Briefly Lampshaded when she's glad she listened to her nagging intuition and brought her costume with her to the beach, despite her initially not wanting to.
• Butt-Monkey: Mary Jane is gorgeous, talented and passionate. She also can't catch a break. Also arguably Deconstructed by the fact that Mary Jane seems to have developed severe anxiety issues because of her constant misfortune.
• The Call Knows Where You Live: As it turns out, Avalanche, a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, was behind the Daily Globe's revealing that Kitty was a mutant and that she was related to Jack O'Lantern. Suffice it to say that he intends to make her an Acolyte of Magneto, one way or another...
• Calling the Old Man Out: Sick of his father's meddling in his love life, Ben Reilly finally has enough and tells Andrew off in issue #28. He's all too ready to move out of Andrew's house and take a second job to pay for medical school itself if that's what it takes to get Andrew out of his life.
• Candlelit Bath: Mary Jane does this a few times for stress relief. She combines it with Enya music for best effect.
• Capitalism Is Bad: Subverted in that some of the problems superheroes have to deal with are caused by Corrupt Corporate Executives. However, it's also repeatedly noted that these crooked executives do not represent all capitalists in general-it's specifically mentioned that the crooked executives outright hate the more honest and upright ones, as the latter's ethics and morals are seen as "holding back" the corrupt ones' efforts to gain more money and power.
• Cardboard Prison: The series tries to avert this. There are several mass supervillain breakouts, but these are usually shown to be caused by outside parties sneaking into the prison and using Applied Phlebotinum or inside jobs by corrupt officials.
• The Casanova: Pyro flirts outrageously with every attractive woman he encounters, even the superheroines he fights.
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: In chapter 58, Spider-Woman happens upon a "mugging" where the "victim" makes good use of bear mace and hard-soled boots to defend herself, leaving Spider-Woman nothing but some unconscious bodies to collect.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Jack O' Lantern's true identity is that of one of several satellite characters who appear at different points throughout the story. Only one of them fits all of Jack's traits, though.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Even after her rebellious phase ends, Mary Jane finds herself still becoming Spider-Woman on instinct whenever people are in trouble. This is even lampshaded by some of her enemies, who ask her why she fights crime as a heroine. Even Mary Jane herself can't quite figure out the reason why she continues to fight crime for no apparent or rational reason. What she does know is that she simply can't help herself whenever she sees someone who needs help. In issue #96, Randy asks Mary Jane if she's ever considered just hanging up her webs and quit being a superhero altogether. She says that she can't bring herself to do it, partly because she thinks of everyone who suffers at the hands of the city's supervillains the way she did as a child, and partly because there are so few heroes in New York and so many villains that it's all the heroes can do to keep the villains in check.
• The City Narrows: New Yorkers commonly refer to Yancy Street as the city's figurative "ass crack", considering what it spews on a daily basis. Home to street gangs, drug dealers and pimps, every law-abiding person who could afford to flee Yancy Street long ago, and the few that remain live in fear of the criminals that use the street as their base of operations, especially the Yancy Street Gang.
• C-List Fodder: Jared makes an effort to subvert this trope, relegating A-list heroes to guest star appearances and forming Spider-Woman's Rogues Gallery out of many of his favorite C- and D-list bad guys.
• Combat Tentacles: The Squid does this, as part of his Voluntary Shapeshifting.
• Comic-Book Time: Averted. The series has a consistent timeline and continually mentions when a given story is happening. Many of the cultural references are also of the time they're set, such as Randy and Mary Jane attending a Lady Gaga concert while she was still an up-and-coming New York singer, Mary Jane enjoying the The Twilight Saga books or Barack Obama becoming President.
• Composite Character:
  • Take the character of Mary Jane Watson, give her Jessica Drew's costume and some of Jessie's powers, add a few biological equivalents to Spider-Man's webbing and spider-tracers, and you have our dashing heroine.
  • The villainous Tendril is based off an obscure Marvel villain, like all of Spider-Woman's enemies, but he also borrows heavily from the Patton Parnell character in Spider-Verse.
  • A villainous example comes from Alistair Darkholme, who is a combination of three separate canon characters, namely the X-Men villain Mystique, the Spider-Man villain Chameleon, and the Rose, another Spider-Man villain.
  • Roderick Kingsley is combined with Jonathan Caesar as Mary Jane's Abhorrent Admirer who tries to use his status as a Corrupt Corporate Executive to target her career.
• Construction Catcalls: Mary Jane gets this when she has to walk past a construction site in one issue, even though she's wearing a flannel shirt, a thick jacket, blue jeans and black Converse sneakers. She has very mixed emotions about it. While she's Squicked out by how gross the catcalls are, she also feels a certain pride at how good she looks no matter what she's wearing.
• Cool Big Sis: She isn't actually their sister, but Mary Jane has played this role for her cousin Kristy and is starting to do it for Kitty as well.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Mary Jane's father Phillip counts as one of these, as does his business partner Norman Osborn. Roderick Kingsley is another particularly notable example.
• Costume Porn: Several of Mary Jane's outfits are described in detail. Some of them are fairly mundane (a plain T-shirt, blue jeans and a pair of red Converse high-tops) while others are more elaborate (her Halloween costume, which includes a silk top hat, white dress shirt, black bow tie, black formal evening jacket, white gloves, short black skirt, dark fishnet stockings and her favorite Manolo Blahniks, which she wears as part of her costume when she dresses as a magician for Halloween).
• Cruel Mercy: When the Constrictor delivers a Curb-Stomp Battle to Spider-Woman in their first battle, he gets a close look at her and is surprised by how young she is. While he could easily kill her, he decides to leave her alive. He makes her watch him kill his target in cold blood to show her just what she's getting into and make her think twice about whether she really wants to be a costumed hero.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Spider-Woman battles the professional freelance assassin Constrictor. It doesn't end well.
  • This later happens to her again when she fights Jack O'Lantern in the second Annual.
  • Another example is her battle with Scorpia.
• Cut-and-Paste Note: After she's outed as a mutant, Kitty Pryde receives one of these as a threatening letter in her mailbox. As noted on this trope's main page, nowadays this is a pretty stupid thing to do since these notes typically give up all kinds of evidence to the police. It's even Lampshaded by Detective Macendale when he arrests the idiot anti-mutant bigot who sent the note in the first place.
• Cute Bruiser: Mary Jane Watson is a hot teenage coed. Spider-Woman is every bit as strong as Spider-Man.
• Cut Himself Shaving: Mary Jane's had to come up with explanations for her injuries at different points. Her typical excuse is that she got caught in the middle of a supervillain attack or some other type of crime. This actually works more than you'd think, particularly since New York is typically rife with enough supervillains to create a Rogues Gallery for each hero that operates there and is specifically mentioned as having the highest crime rate in the entire United States.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check:
  • Subverted with Polestar. After almost twenty years of slaving away in honest work, he's earned about as much wealth and prestige as Al Bundy. So why in the blue hell would he get a legitimate job when he obtains magnetic powers?
  • More generally, this trope is repeatedly Reconstructed throughout the series. The simple fact is that many supervillains find chaos, torture and murder to be far more fulfilling and meaningful than earning an honest living with their powers. They could probably make an honest living with their powers, but many of them simply don't want to.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: In this case, it's the son (Ben Reilly) dating a girl (Mary Jane Watson) that his father (Andrew Reilly) hates.
• Deadly Prank: Brigid O'Reilly overdoses on a designer drug at a teenage party hosted by Felicia Hardy. The intent was for them to record the crazy stuff she'd do while she was high and then humiliate her by posting it on the Internet, but when they think Brigid dies from the overdose, they dump her in a chemical tank in the hopes that the toxic soup will dissolve her body. Instead, the combination of the toxic chemicals and the designer drug end up turning her into Mayhem.
• Deadpan Snarker: Will O'the Wisp is one. Spider-Woman has her moments too.
• Death by Secret Identity: Wesley Danson finds out Spider-Woman's identity, but is murdered by the Brothers Grimm before he can share it.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Mary Jane is a downplayed deconstruction of both the Triple Shifter and the Butt-Monkey. The series spends a lot of time exploring what a constant stream of bad luck and struggling to balance a difficult civilian life with the horrible things one sees as a superhero does to Mary Jane's mental health. She suffers from constant stress at the best of times, and she's had multiple full-on panic attacks and nervous breakdowns. Randy's considered suggesting to Mary Jane that she hang up her webs and retire as a hero, but he knows that he'd probably be doing the exact same thing she is if he was the one with superpowers.
• Deface of the Moon: Jack O' Lantern uses his wrist blasters to carve JACK O' LANTERN WAS HERE on the outer walls of a large Osborn Industries factory.
• Defrosting Ice Queen:
  • Mary Jane herself. A rarity in that the Ice Queen is actually the protagonist.
  • Another example is Randy's mother Louise in regards to Mary Jane. Louise disliked Mary Jane intensely when she first started dating Randy, but after Randy's grandmother Martha set her straight, Louise became much nicer to Mary Jane afterward.
• Deliberately Distressed Damsel: Done by Mary Jane on a couple of occasions:
  • In one instance, she does this to get some bystanders to catch the thief who stole her backpack, since she couldn't keep up with him in the high-heeled boots she was wearing.
  • On another occasion, she and several other bank customers are held hostage by the Gregor Shapanka Blizzard. Mary Jane immediately begins to pretend to panic, begging the supervillain not to hurt her. An amused Blizzard lets her leave to give his message to the police, which she does...but she then takes the opportunity to suit up as Spider-Woman and come back to fight Blizzard.
• Depraved Bisexual: Joystick has had flings with men and women alike, but her sexuality isn't what makes her depraved. It tends to be more the violence and the destruction she causes as a supervillain that do it.
• Didn't Think This Through: When Mary Jane discovers she has super-powers, she immediately becomes a costumed hero to spite her father. She didn't consider how dangerous fighting supervillains can be, and is nearly in over her head almost immediately.
• Dirty Old Man: Roderick Kingsley's attention makes Mary Jane very uncomfortable, but she forces herself to put up with it because she needs the money.
• Disproportionate Retribution: When one particularly fat and stinking neckbeard fan gropes and kisses Mary Jane, she gets him thrown out of the convention. His natural response is to...join a group of incels and have her and a bunch of other women murdered by Supercharger.
• Distaff Counterpart:
  • Mary Jane is one of these to Spider-Man, who also exists in this universe. Oddly enough, Peter Parker is more surprised than angry at someone stealing his moniker, suspecting that there's something else going on with the fact that Spider-Woman's powers are similar to his own in so many ways.
  • Scorpia, one of Spider-Woman's newest enemies, is an Ax-Crazy Ascended Fangirl with powers similar to that of one of her idols-Mac Gargan, alias the Scorpion.
• Domestic Abuse: Beating his wife is bad enough, but Phillip Watson also quite openly cheats on her with call girls and prostitutes. Getting caught in the act by a thirteen-year old Mary Jane doesn't exactly fill him with remorse.
• Do Not Adjust Your Set:
  • When Jack O' Lantern invades the Stark Enterprises facility where Anna Watson works, he broadcasts his hostage-taking on Mary Jane's TV using a specially rigged device.
  • Also done by the Brothers Grimm when they hijack a TV studio and force Spider-Woman to fight them for the cameras.
• Doomed by Canon: Repeatedly subverted in the case of Spider-Man. Aunt May was killed by the Burglar, Uncle Ben and Gwen Stacy are both still alive and Mary Jane sees Peter more as a surrogate sibling than as a love interest.
• Double Consciousness: Subverted in Mary Jane's case. Her anger issues came from trying to suppress a lot of her personal problems and feelings, and acting as Spider-Woman allows her to come to terms with them. She displays different parts of herself at different times, but they are all part of her larger whole.
• The Dreaded: Jack O' Lantern is one of Mary Jane's only enemies who truly frightens her. From his Ax-Crazy demeanor to his Obviously Evil appearance to his nearly killing her more than once to his being a Stalker without a Crush who somehow always knows where she is to his warped interest in making her his heir to his attempting to Mind Rape her to that end, Jack O' Lantern literally gives Mary Jane nightmares. When she learns he's escaped from jail and is stalking her, she has a full-blown panic attack. Jack also has a similar status among New York's supervillain community, to the point that he can rally them to his vision of creating a playground for evil.
• Driven to Suicide: Norman Osborn does this to a businessman who rejects an offer from Norman. The businessman's son and his girlfriend later attack Harry to get revenge.
• Driven to Villainy: Tarot almost counts.
• Dumb Blonde: Roderick Kingsley's wife Rebecca looks like this, but she thoroughly subverts it when she rats Roderick out to the authorities for his illegal dealings and plans to sue him for control of Kingsley Cosmetics, even as she soaks him in their divorce. Notably, she's also a savvy investor, having built up her own independent wealth quite a bit from the already large sum she inherited as an heiress.
• Dude Magnet: Since she's never going to get together with Peter Parker, Mary Jane is a free agent. So far she's dated both Ben Reilly and Randy Robertson, attracted the crazed Supercharger, flirted with Mark Raxton, and left the men at various beach parties and high society charity functions drooling.
• Enemy Mine: Spider-Woman and Blizzard set aside their differences when a massive army of brainwashed supervillains invade New York. Once Spider-Woman brings Blizzard back to his senses, he helps her protect many of the innocent bystanders caught up in the bedlam.
• Enigmatic Minion: Roderick Kingsley's older brother Daniel never speaks and never seems to do anything besides follow his brother around and beat up anyone who threatens him. God only knows what he's actually thinking.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Uh, no they don't... at least if you're Jack O' Lantern, who doesn't give two shits about what could happen to his relatives once his identity is publicly exposed.
  • This trope is played straight, however, by Tarot and Blizzard, who are very close to their families. It's not a coincidence that they're also the only members of Spider-Woman's Rogues Gallery who aren't complete and total psychopaths.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • He might have tried to rob an armored car in his first appearance, but Blizzard is appalled and horrified by what happens to New York in issue #14. When Spider-Woman asks him why he helped her, he replies that if New York were destroyed, there'd be nothing left for him to rob. As Blizzard himself states, he's a trailer park boy not a killer.
  • Another example is when Corrupt Corporate Executives like Simon Utrecht begin dropping Phillip Watson after he's exposed as an anti-mutant racist. Even if they don't care about mutants themselves, the corrupt executives believe that it's bad for business to be seen associating with someone who sponsors terrorist groups like the Friends of Humanity.
  • And then there's Dirty Cop Jason Phillip Macendale, who seethes at the way the anti-mutant movement claims to be standing up for their country and communities. He might be a very bad man, but at least he's honest about it!
  • The entire Gill family (Blizzard's relatives) may consist of hardened criminals who've gotten arrested numerous times and been involved in drug dealing, bank robbery and car theft, but they don't take kindly to seeing mutants being abused. It's why Lucy and Rae Gill, Blizzard's mother and aunt, step forward to defend Tarot from four tough female prisoners, at their son's/nephew's behest.
• Even the Girls Want Her: This may apply to Mary Jane either in her civilian or Spider-Woman identities, but so far we don't know for sure. It definitely applies to Joystick, though, and she eagerly returned the affections her female fans had for her.
• Every Proper Lady Should Curtsy: Mary Jane does this a few times during her performances and Drama classes.
• Evil Plan: Jack O'Lantern triggers one of these when he orchestrates a city-wide gang war; a neccesary condition for his real objective.
• Evil Counterpart: Mary Jane initially became Spider-Woman to spite her father, but in many respects it acted as an outlet for all her feelings of guilt and frustration. Becoming a superhero actually helped her cope with these parts of her identity. On the other hand, Steven Mark Levins became Jack O'Lantern to indulge his most perverted desires and sadistic urges, and let these parts of his identity take him over completely.
• Evil Feels Good: Jack O' Lantern revels in the freedom that paradoxically comes with wearing a ghoulish pumpkin mask and causing misery for innocent people.
• Evil Laugh: Jack O'Lantern indulges himself with this trope on a fairly regular basis.
• Faint in Shock: Mary Jane does this more than once when Jack O' Lantern stalks her and seemingly breaks into her home.
• Fallen Princess: Mary Jane is this trope to a degree. She's got the good looks, talent and apparent social stature, but now she's struggling to make ends meet, is continually plagued by bad luck and only hangs out with a small group of close friends. That said, she doesn't entirely fulfill this trope since her friends aren't really geeks.
• Fantastic Slurs: The term "mutie" for mutants exists in the setting.
• The Fashionista: Sure, as Spider-Woman Mary Jane is an ass-kicking Action Girl who doesn't hesitate to fight as fiercely as any man when the chips are down. In her civilian life, though, she takes great pride both in her impeccable taste in clothes and the fact that she looks damn good in just about anything she wears.
• Fat Bitch: Carol Jannetty is an incredibly fat and obnoxious Brawn Hilda who takes pleasure in bullying the people around her. After Mary Jane mouths off at her on a couple of occasions, Mrs. Jannetty gets revenge by employing a Batman Gambit to make Mary Jane lose a major acting role.
• Feminine Women Can Cook: Mary Jane occasionally does this, cooking lasagna for herself and Randy on Valentine's Day or baking him a tin of chocolate chip cookies.
• Fiery Redhead: Mary Jane, of course.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: Spider-Woman's rogues gallery contains this trope with Blizzard (ice), Firebrand (fire) and Supercharger (lightning).
• Fish out of Water: Some of Mary Jane's modelling gigs involve her doing Cosplay to advertise particular businesses or work at the New York Comic Convention. She really doesn't understand much about geek culture, and at first finds it rather weird. Fortunately, many of the fans are quite accommodating and it doesn't take her long to get used to it.
• Foe Romantic Subtext: Failing to stop Scorpia's killing spree is bad enough by itself, but Spider-Woman is distinctly disturbed by the way Scorpia addresses her during their battle. Scorpia refers to her as a "delicious little morsel", who she could just "eat up and spit right out...and I'm not saying that just because you're a a spider." She also calls Spider-Woman a "precious little thing" and says she's looking forward to their next "playdate".
• Food Shove Gag: Mary Jane bakes some cookies for Randy in the final issue. When he asks her why, she cuts him off by stuffing one of the cookies in his mouth. Mary Jane then answers his question as he eats the cookie, smiling blissfully.
• Forced to Watch: The Constrictor and Jack O' Lantern both force Spider-Woman to watch them murder their targets in cold blood after they've subdued her. She doesn't take it well.
• For Science!: This is why Dr. Karla Sofen, alias Moonstone, has done the things she does. She's fascinated by the psychology of the insane and evil, and actively enables them to cause further mayhem and bloodshed so she can study them.
• For the Evulz:
  • Why does Firebrand try to burn down entire city blocks with his powers? For kicks, mostly.
  • This is also why Jack O' Lantern, alias Steven Mark Levins, became a supervillain.
• For Want Of A Nail: In Earth-2706, Peter Parker was bitten by a spider and received its powers, as he does in most universes. However, Mary Jane was also bitten at the same time by a second spider, and received powers of her own. In her case, however, the different genetics of the spiders who bit her and Peter, and the different genetics of Mary Jane and Peter themselves, caused Mary Jane's powers to manifest much later than Peter's do.
• Freak Out: When Supercharger professes his love for Spider-Woman, the disgusted heroine calls him sick and says that she can do without the "love" of a sick freak like him. This trope is Supercharger's reaction.
• Freudian Excuse: Defied with Jack O'Lantern. He had an idyllic childhood free from any trauma that may have spurned him down the supervillain path, but he was simply born rotten and quickly indulged in the opportunity to live out his sadistic fantasies.
• The Friends Who Never Hang: Mary Jane and Peter rarely interact in their civilian lives outside a few phone calls, most of which are when Mary Jane asks Peter for some advice. It's justified in that they don't want to give anyone else in their lives hints about the other's identity by wondering why they interact so much.
• Fully-Embraced Fiend: Tendril is a particularly horrific example. He was originally human before being mutated by a combination of Spider-Woman's blood and a mess of toxic chemicals into an eight-eyed, sixteen-limbed spider-like monstrosity. He loves what he's become, using his powers to become an especially depraved Serial Killer stalking and cannibalizing young women.
• Fusion Dance: The Brothers Grimm are a chimera, two separate beings that merged together in the womb. They now share one body, each contributing some of its DNA.
• Gaslighting: Will O' the Wisp does this to one of his former bosses at Roxxon, sneaking into the man's apartment through the power lines and shielding himself from the security system. He also does it to Spider-Woman.
• Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: Mary Jane's powers actually come from being bitten by a genetically altered spider that came from the same collection as the one that bit Peter.
• Genius Book Club: Philippe Bazin's library continues erudite tomes like The Prince and The Art of War (Sun Tzu), which guide his tactics as a crime boss.
• The Ghost: Stilt-Man has yet to appear in any stories. However, he's said to be one of the most feared and respected supervillains in the entire profession.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: Ironically, this is the reason Joystick stopped having lesbian flings. Girl-on-girl action has become so fetishized by the media that it's not even subversive anymore.
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Mary Jane loves the teddy bear Randy gets her for Christmas.
• Girly Bruiser: Mary Jane is an ass-kicking Action Girl as Spider-Woman, but she's also a Twilight and Harry Potter fangirl, has a massive crush on the likes of Robert Pattinson and Justin Bieber, enjoys fashionable clothing, collects shoes like a madwoman, loves the teddy bear her boyfriend Randy gave her and is otherwise proud to be a "girly girl."
• Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: Although Mary Jane is a "girly girl", she's also an expert martial artist and Action Girl who's taken down dozens of supervillains as Spider-Woman.
• Go-Getter Girl: Mary Jane has elements of this. Deconstructed in that it causes her a lot of stress, particularly with all the pressure she puts on herself.
• Gone Horribly Right: Eccentric entomologist Buck Mitty is convinced that his special potion will enable him to mentally communicate with the insect world. He's right...but the potion goes much further than that, converting his consciousness into a Hive Mind that controls thousands of individual wasps as Swarm.
• Good Feels Good: There are times when being Spider-Woman causes Mary Jane no end of stress and irritation, but the gratitude she receives from many of the people she helps does a lot to cheer her up.
• Grand Finale: Issue #98 concludes the series, as Mary Jane considers everything from her future career to the challenges she'll no doubt face in the future.
• Grand Theft Me: Felicia manages to do this to Mayhem, taking control of her body when she attempts to kill Felicia.
• Grave-Marking Scene: When Jonathan Caesar is killed, Mary Jane visits his grave and leaves some flowers. She knows rationally that he was a criminal and did some awful things, but he was so supportive and encouraging to her personally that she almost saw him as a father figure.
• Greater-Scope Villain: High-powered villains and organizations like Magneto, HYDRA, Doctor Doom and AIM have been mentioned several times. However, they have not appeared in the series itself, largely because their activities are outside the ken of Spider-Woman's street level action.
• Guest-Star Party Member: So far, Spider-Woman has teamed up with Spider-Man and the X-Men.
• Guilt Complex: Mary Jane constantly berates herself for not being able to keep on top of everything in her life, and failing to live up to her own expectations of herself.
• The Gwen Stacy: Very deliberately subverted. Gwen is very much alive.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: When you combine this with the fact that Firebrand's powers increase with his rage, the end results are not pretty.
• Halloween Episode: As with Ultimate Sleepwalker, Ultimate Spider-Woman has begun an annual tradition of Halloween Specials which are published in October of every year.
• Hand Blast: Spider-Woman's bioelectric venom blasts are a textbook example.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Mary Jane gets a lot of admiration from men when she goes out in public, and she loves every moment of it.
• He Cleans Up Nicely: This is Mary Jane's reaction when she sees what Ben looks like in his tuxedo. Ben returns the favor a few seconds later when he sees Mary Jane in her party dress.
• The Hedonist: Joystick went from bisexual flings to drugs and raves to supervillainy as she got bored with each activity in turn.
• Hero of Another Story: Heroes like Spider-Man, Daredevil and Moon Knight have their own adventures which are occasionally referred to, although they sometimes intersect with Spider-Woman's cases.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • After a Humiliation Conga stretched over two days, Mary Jane pretty much falls to pieces at the end of issue #35. Ben Parker helps her get back on her feet.
  • Happens a second time in issue #48 when Jack O'Lantern tries to force her into one of these via drugging. It almost works, too, but...
  • The worst example yet happens in issue #95 when Mary Jane learns that Jack O'Lantern escaped from prison and is stalking her. She has a full-blown panic attack and completely shuts down. The paramedics advise Maddie that Mary Jane suffered a really bad shock and needs to avoid any more stressors. Unfortunately, being Born Unlucky means things only go From Bad to Worse for Mary Jane and she gets another shock at the end of the issue.
• Heroic Bystander:
  • Subverted when one of these tries to help Spider-Woman during her second fight with Jack O' Lantern and gets his throat ripped open for his trouble. He's dead before he even hits the floor.
  • During her battle with Swarm, Spider-Woman tries to defeat the wasps by triggering the building's sprinkler system. Unfortunately, her limited efforts aren't enough and she's nearly killed. Fortunately, the building's custodial staff activate the sprinkler system on their own and down more of the wasps with fire hoses when they see what Spider-Woman's trying to do.
• Heroic Fatigue: As of issue #34, Mary Jane has pretty much fallen into this trope. Granted, it's not only from being a superhero-being a Triple Shifter and having a very stressful civilian life has Mary Jane struggling to even come close to keeping on top of things.
• Hero's First Rescue: When Mary Jane briefly stops wearing her Spider-Woman costume, concerned about the violence with which she attacks her enemies, she is confronted with a woman whose house is on fire and whose elderly mother is trapped on the second floor. Without thinking, Mary Jane uses her powers to save the woman, which makes her rethink her previous stance.
• Heroine With Bad Publicity: Spider-Woman's initial recklessness nearly hurt a lot of people, and she got quite a bit of flack for this. Now, however, she's gotten hit with this trope especially hard since Vincent Gonzalez started an organized hate campaign against her.
• Heroic Resolve: Spider-Woman being The Determinator, this comes up every so often and helps her break out of the Heroic BSoD Jack O'Lantern tries to force her into in issue #55.
• Heroic Willpower: When Spider-Woman fights Spiral in the first Annual, Spiral easily disables her with a magic spell. Spider-Woman's anger at her loved ones being killed by the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants gives her the strength to fight off Spiral's spells.
• Hidden Depths: Blizzard is quite comfortable with the idea that he's a petty lowlife who'll never amount to anything, but he's also shown surprising moments of insight and compassion.
• High-Class Call Girl: Black Mamba was one of these before she joined the Serpent Society. It's not all it's cracked up to be when so many of her clients are rich and powerful men who have no reservations about using her as a punching bag.
• Hipster: Kitty Pryde hates hipsters for what she considers their condescending arrogance, their pretending to identify with oppressed groups while appropriating their culture, pretending to slum it and producing crappy art while living off their parents' trust funds, and being just as conformist as any mainstream person.
• Hive Mind: Washed-up former supervillain and all-around Butt-Monkey Buck Mitty becomes one as the intelligence controlling all of the wasps that make up Swarm.
• Honor Before Reason: Mary Jane turns down Anna Watson's offer to live with the rest of the family at her townhouse, given that she really doesn't want to feel like she's mooching off Anna. She also insists on helping to pay for Maddie's therapy and legal bills, which is one of the main reasons she's always strapped for cash and needs the extra modelling work.
• Hood Ornament Hottie: One of Mary Jane's modelling jobs involves her modelling a line of Zettai Ryouiki thigh-high sports socks patterned after the colors of the various National Football League teams. For the Detroit Lions socks, she poses on a classic car.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Some of Mary Jane's powers begin working reflexively, and it takes a bit of experimentation before she figures out how to use them properly. Luckily, she's a quick study.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: This is what results when Kong starts dating Kitty, humorously Lampshaded by an amused Mary Jane.
• Humans Are Bastards: This is one of Jack O'Lantern's core beliefs. He claims to be better than most other people because he's willing to embrace his true evil nature.
• Humiliation Conga:
  • It started when Phillip Watson was outed on live TV as an anti-mutant activist. First he started losing clients, then he was kicked out of his club by the disgusted membership, he was paralyzed and gassed by Jack O'Lantern, manipulated into starting a city-wide Mob War that left the city's crime lords howling for his blood, and finally put out of his misery after being murdered by Jack O'Lantern.
  • Another example is combined with Laser-Guided Karma when it comes to Will O' the Wisp. From being fired from his job after causing an accident that killed several people because he was too cheap to spring for decent safeguards, to bankrupting himself filing wrongful dismissal lawsuits, to having his wife leave him for his coworker after years of neglect, the Wisp is a Jerkass who largely caused his own problems, but refuses to take responsibility for them.
  • A non-villainous example hits Mary Jane hard in issue #35. At first she seems like everything's looking up for her, with new acting and modeling jobs that are sure to be major stepping stones in her career. Unfortunately...her grades are in the toilet after she blew her midterm exams and she gets a severe dressing down from Dr. Connors; she ends up being sexually harassed by Roderick Kingsley, fired after she refuses his advances and threatened with the fact that Kingsley will use his connections to ruin her budding career; she had her backpack stolen by a purse snatcher and ended up being late for her audition, which meant she didn't get her dream role in Les Misérables; she got splashed outside the theater by a passing vehicle, which ruined any chance she might have had of convincing the producers to give her another chance; she got into a fight with a supervillain and ended up being late for work at the coffee shop, which got her fired; she got splashed again as she was leaving the coffee shop; and finally she and Kitty Pryde are getting evicted from their apartment.
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Bullseye and Boomerang get into an argument over which one of them has the more Improbable Aiming Skills. To settle the debate, they make a bet to see which of them can kill Spider-Man first. The winner gets $100,000 of the other's money and recognition as the best marksman in the supervillain community.
• Hysterical Woman: Subverted a few times when Mary Jane pretends to be this trope as a way to convince supervillains to let her go before coming back as Spider-Woman.
• An Ice Person: Blizzard is one of these. Who'd have guessed?
• I Have Many Names: He was born Alistair Darkholme, but he is more famously known as the Chameleon. In his current role as a crime lord, he goes by the name of the Rose.
• I Have No Son!: Firebrand's parents are thoroughly disgusted and ashamed of their sociopathic offspring, and become shut-ins when he becomes a Pyromaniac supervillain. They end up showing more concern for Spider-Woman when she saves them from Firebrand attempting to kill them, shocked at how young she is, and refer to their son as a "monster".
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: The monstrosity called Tendril does this to his young, female victims, including Spider-Woman. She's the only one who survives.
• If I Can't Have You…: Friendly bit of advice to any aspiring superheroines: If you have an obsessive stalker who's so devoted to you that he pays several million dollars to get himself superpowers, starts calling himself Supercharger, and goes around murdering people who diss you in the media, chances are he's not going to take rejection well...
• I Just Want to Be Normal: To be honest, this version of Kitty Pryde considers her phasing and intangibility powers to be rather useless, and can't really think of anything to do with them. She'd much rather not make a big deal of being a mutant, and refused to join either the X-Men or the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Tendril fits in to this. He's an especially twisted version since he only feeds on the attractive young women he stalks and murders.
• Indy Ploy: Much like her official comics counterpart, Mary Jane is very skilled at thinking on her feet and figuring out how to deal with unexpected challenges as Spider-Woman.
• Info Dump: An unfortunate necessity of the series. Since this version of the Marvel Universe is in many ways drastically different from the real one, this trope becomes the quickest and easiest way to get the readers up to speed.
• Irrational Hatred: Suffice it to say that Jack O'Lantern's hatred of Spider-Woman goes way beyond what the rest of her enemies feel about her. It's gotten to the point where he spends half his time plotting new criminal schemes and the other half of the time obsessing over Spider-Woman and trying to figure out how he can incorporate her suffering into his plans.
• It's All My Fault:
  • Spider-Woman thinks this way after Phillip Watson's murder, but Maddie reminds Mary Jane that he made his own choices, and he has to live with that responsibility. She did everything she could to try and save him, and that's what matters before anything else.
  • More generally, Mary Jane keeps pushing herself to live up to her self-imposed responsibilities, but her inability to do so ends up driving her crazy. Her family and friends have to remind her about her most important responsibility-her responsibility to herself.
• It's Personal: With several of Spider-Woman's enemies:
  • Will O' the Wisp took Spider-Woman's interfering in his plans very personally, to the point that he forms a Villain Team-Up with some of her other rogues to try and kill her. He also becomes a Stalker without a Crush when the rest of them are defeated, nearly killing her when he causes a subway accident;
  • Firebrand became pissed off at Spider-Woman because she prevented him from torching innocent people, which he considers to be his right because of his family wealth and status.
  • The Brothers Grimm became obsessed with making Spider-Woman their next "art" piece or the "straight woman" in their villain act.
  • The Gregor Shapanka Blizzard hates the Donald Gill Blizzard for stealing his identity, and wants to kill him for it. He later extended this hatred to Spider-Woman for interfering with his plans to kill Donald.
  • Supercharger went from being a Stalker with a Crush to a crazed Yandere who thought If I Can't Have You… after Spider-Woman rejected his advances.
  • Exaggerated by Jack O' Lantern, of course.
• Jaded Washout: This is what Polestar was before the accident that gave him superhuman powers.
• Jerkass: Will O' the Wisp is one of these.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Although she gets better as the series goes on, Mary Jane goes into this territory at times. Instead of hiding her anger and frustrations behind a party-girl persona, this version of Mary Jane simply represses it, which leads her anger to manifest on occasion. Even then, she still fights determinedly to protect innocent people and stop the supervillains threatening them.
• Joke Character: Heavily subverted with Stilt-Man. Although he's never appeared in any stories, he's viewed with the same fear and reverence as the likes of Sabertooth, Jack O' Lantern and the Green Goblin, among the very elite of their profession. Note that this is played entirely straight.
• Justice by Other Legal Means: Mary Jane has no recourse when Roderick Kingsley sexually harasses her and uses his influence to try to ruin her modelling career. The same can't be said for his wife Rebecca, who divorces Kingsley when she catches him in bed with Felicia Hardy, exposes his dirty dealings to the authorities in exchange for an immunity deal and plans to sue Roderick for his remaining shares of Kingsley Cosmetics for endangering the company. She also fires Felicia from her Kingsley modeling job and gives it to Mary Jane instead.
• Karma Houdini: Felicia Hardy, oh so much:
  Spider-Woman: You're responsible for this.
  Felicia: You can't prove that.
  Spider-Woman: No. But you're the one who has to live with it.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: When Mary Jane accidentally reveals to Randy that Felicia caused the Harlem bombings to pain him, he suffers a Heroic BSoD and believes that it's all his fault. When Randy's parents get wind of it, they assume that Mary Jane cheated on Randy, since he came back from a date with her so upset, and there's nothing else that could have caused him so much grief. Unfortunately, neither Mary Jane nor Randy can explain the truth without also revealing Mary Jane's secret identity, and so Mary Jane gets a brutal "The Reason You Suck" Speech from Randy's mother Louise, along with a warning that she'd better not show her face on the Robertsons' property again.

Tropes L–Z

• Lap Pillow: Mary Jane does this in the final issue when she pushes Randy into an easy chair and hops up into his lap, stretching her legs over the armrest. Randy doesn't complain.
• Large Ham: The Brothers Grimm absolutely loves a crowd. He always tries to cap off a performance with a suitably dramatic flair.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Subverted to Hell and back. Although Steven Mark Levins is now in prison, he doesn't really care and in fact rather enjoys the notoriety he's received from his depraved crimes. Much of the fallout from his activities has actually fallen on his relatives, who most certainly do not deserve what they've been put through.
• Legacy Character: Subverted by Donald Gill, who adopted the Blizzard identity while Gregor Shapanka, the first Blizzard, was still active. Now Shapanka wants to kill Gill for plagiarizing him. When Spider-Woman interferes, she ends up on Shapanka's enemies list as well.
• Legion of Doom: This is ultimately revealed to be Jack O'Lantern's greatest goal, namely to form the city's supervillains into a new crime syndicate capable of seizing control of the city's rackets for themselves, robbing and killing for fun as much as for profit.
• Lighter and Softer: Mary Jane herself. While at first she was an angry, bitter young woman with a Hidden Heart of Gold, Character Development has shifted her much more towards the -dere side of her Tsundere / Sugar-and-Ice Personality. She still gets stressed and angry, but she's become much better at controlling her emotions and is a much more outgoing and friendly person now.
• Like Brother and Sister: This is the essence of Mary Jane's relationship with Peter Parker. There's no romantic attraction between them, but their powers and shared origin means they share a unique experience.
• Like Parent, Like Child: Mary Jane has inherited both her father's fiery, passionate nature and her mother's Broken Bird status due to everything she went through growing up. Character Development has helped Mary Jane get better control of her emotions and start enjoying life again.
• Loony Fan: The morphing video game villain Netshape turns into this, being pissed off about such things as Infinite Crisis, the film version of V for Vendetta, the fact that Duke Nukem Forever still hadn't come out (the issue is set in 2008) and the announcement of a new dub for One Piece. He's so outraged by this that he goes on a killing spree at the New York Comic Con, with his main targets being the creators who angered him.
• Lonely Rich Kid: Phillip Watson might have been very wealthy, but his abuse left Mary Jane very guarded and withdrawn. She only had a few close friends in high school, and otherwise kept any of the boys she dated from getting too close.
• Loser Son of Loser Dad: Mary Jane gets a fair amount of flack from Ben Reilly's family for being the daughter of Phillip Watson. The Reillys themselves, including Ben's cousin Kitty, get this when Jack O'Lantern is exposed as Steven Mark Levins and the Daily Globe exposes the connection, exposing Kitty as a mutant to the public at large.
• Love-Obstructing Parents: This trope is a persistent headache for Mary Jane. Her budding romance with Ben Reilly was derailed by the fact that his parents hated her, and her current relationship with Randy Robertson is strained because his parents don't like her either. Although Randy tries to reassure her, Mary Jane is less than confident about her ability to win the Robertson parents over.
• Mad Artist: The Brothers Grimm sees himself as a performance artist. Unfortunately, his idea of "performing" is to kidnap people, force them to watch his bizarre Nightmare Fuel performances, and then rob them blind.
• Magical Native American: Subverted with Thunderbird and Warpath, two members of the X-Men. Both men are Apache, but neither has any magical powers.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Or rather, make it look like the victim is a casualty of a random supervillain attack. This is a common technique used in assassinations performed by costumed supervillains.
• Malicious Slander: An especially bloodcurdling variation exists with Vincent Gonzalez, whose sister Michelle was murdered by Stalker with a Crush Supercharger because she maintained a Spider-Woman hate site. In return, Vincent blamed Spider-Woman and organized an online hate campaign against her. He's also gathered some of his fellow spider-haters into a gang of sadistic thugs who viciously beat Spider-Woman supporters that have criticized him. This, of course, is all part of Vincent's plan to further defame Spider-Woman by pointing out that if she was a "real" hero, she wouldn't have let these attacks happen in the first place!
• Mall Santa:
  • Once school lets out, Mary Jane gets a job working as a Christmas elf in the Santa Claus display at Macy's. She feels more than a little silly, but ironically the job is actually less stressful than working at the coffee shop.
  • Next year, Mary Jane becomes a Rare Female Example when the regular Santas are unavailable. She dresses in an impromptu Mrs. Claus outfit and talks to the children herself.
  • The year after that, Mary Jane resumes her Mrs. Claus role and gets Randy to join in as Santa.
• Mama Bear:
  • Mary Jane is especially protective of her mother, Aunt Anna and cousin Kristy. When Spider-Woman battles Spiral, the threat to her family allows her to overcome Spiral's magic with sheer rage. Later, when she gets a rematch with the Constrictor, his threatening her loved ones makes Spider-Woman kick his ass six ways from Sunday.
  • Mary Jane also feels this way about her close friends. After what happens to Kitty in issue #31, an enraged Mary Jane vows to make sure that anyone who messes with Kitty will mess with Spider-Woman.
• Mama Didn't Raise No Criminal: Averted by Jack O'Lantern's relatives when his identity is revealed. Instead of denying Jack's crimes, the relatives react with horror and dismay at learning that they're related to a psychopathic mass murderer.
• Mind Rape: This is how Mayhem controls her victims, either by making them die of fright or inciting them to do what she wants. People with strong enough willpower, like Spider-Woman, can still fight it.
• Mob War: Through Phillip Watson, Jack O'Lantern triggers one of these between the four major crime syndicates in New York.
• Monster Clown: The Brothers Grimm wear a harlequin mask and a belled jester's hat as part of their bizarre costume. They're also criminal performance artists, whether they're kidnapping people and forcing them to watch bizarre "shows" or murdering people and turning them into works of "art".
• Moral Myopia: Completely subverted. Jack O' Lantern's relatives feel nothing but horror and loathing for him when his true identity is exposed and they know what he's done. Jack, for his part, doesn't give a damn about what his public exposure could mean for his relatives and simply shrugs off the idea that people could try and get revenge on him by harassing them.
• More than Mind Control: Jack O'Lantern becomes so obsessed with his hatred of Spider-Woman, while still being intrigued by her obvious potential, that he tries to make her into his supervillain heir, completely destroying her sense of self and her very identity in the process.
• Motive Rant: Jack O' Lantern gives several of these in explaining his outlook on life. Possibly subverted in that he gives them before he's ever caught-one rant involves him explaining his goals for the Tomorrow Legion to his fellow supervillains, while another has him explaining to a defeated Spider-Woman just why he hates her so much.
• Mr. Exposition: Peter Parker takes on this role when he explains the workings of his and Mary Jane's respective spider-powers.
• Mrs. Claus: When the men who play the Mall Santa at Macy's Department Store aren't available, Mary Jane fills in for them by dressing up as Mrs. Claus and having the kids sit in her lap. She "explains" that Santa has a bad cold and doesn't want anyone to get sick, so he asked his wife to fill in for him.
• Muggles Do It Better: Sadly, no. People who've tried to defend themselves from supervillain attacks with their guns inevitably lose. This also applies to hitmen who don't wear costumes and/or don't have superpowers. It's gotten to the point where hired killers can't get any work unless they wear warped costumes and employ outlandish technology or powers.
• Multiarmed And Dangerous: Spiral is much the same as her comic counterpart, having multiple arms, multiple swords, multiple magical spells and an Ax-Crazy disposition.
• Mundane Utility: Getting back in after she locks herself out of her house, locker or car is about all Kitty Pryde can really think of using her mutant phasing powers for.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Mary Jane hasn't gained any muscular bulk since her superhuman powers manifested. Instead, her muscles are now rock hard and spectacularly efficient for her size.
• My Beloved Smother: Gender Flipped with Ben Reilly and his father Andrew, who's constantly trying to meddle in Ben's love life, to the point of insulting and threatening his girlfriends if they don't stay away from him.
• Mythology Gag: Mary Jane occasionally sarcastically observes to herself that "the old Watson luck is running true to form." This is a reference to the original Spider-Man comics, when Peter Parker would say the same thing about "the old Parker luck."
• Neighbourhood-Friendly Gangsters: Lampshaded and subverted by Silvermane, head of the Maggia, who notes that only naive, sentimental idiots believe in this trope and think that organized crime syndicates actually give a damn about their own or anybody else's communities. Every crime syndicate in New York produces and distributes everything from drugs to child pornography to snuff films, and the few criminal groups that have tried to show some sort of charity or compassion have been ruthlessly strangled by the more brutal syndicates.
• Nervous Wreck: Mary Jane sometimes has trouble coping with being a Triple Shifter, and turns into this. Her doctor warns her that she's suffering from stress and she needs to take it easy, but since Mary Jane is Born Unlucky and suffers from Chronic Hero Syndrome it's not as easy as her doctor thinks.
• Never Mess with Granny: Randy's grandmother Martha Robertson is a rock of support for Randy when he's suffering. She's also a Shipper on Deck for Randy and Mary Jane who convinces Randy's parents to give Mary Jane a chance when she and Randy aren't able to do it. Not to mention she doesn't take guff from anyone, seeing right through Mary Jane's attempts to deny being upset over the way Randy's parents treat her.
• Never My Fault: Will O' the Wisp blames everyone but himself for his problems.
• New Jobs As The Plot Demands: Mary Jane has worked as a fashion model, an actress in both stage plays and indie films, a budding social media influencer, and a waitress both at a coffee shop and retro nightclub in between attending university.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Spider-Woman battles the Gregor Shapanka Blizzard when he takes a bank full of hostages. In the process, she destroys his cold-generating cryonic equipment with her sting blasts. Unfortunately, that allows his body to absorb the cryonic energy and gives him natural ice-generating powers. Mary Jane invokes this trope on herself when she realizes what happened.
• Nietzsche Wannabe: Jack O'Lantern has shades of this trope in his outlook on life and his actively reveling in causing mayhem and chaos. He also sees himself as something of an Ubermensch in that he embraces and acts on his true evil nature, unlike the mindless cattle that hide their dark sides behind a wall of civilized bullcrap.
• Noble Demon: Jason Phillip Macendale is so disgusted with Kitty being harassed for being a mutant that he makes every effort to track down and bust the guy who put the threatening letter in her mailbox.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Mary Jane suffers this on a regular basis.
• Noodle Incident: When Mary Jane and her friends decide to go camping for the rest of their vacation after Polestar ruins their stay at Fire Island, Kitty insists that Kong leave his guitar behind. When Mary Jane asks why, Kitty says that she doesn't want to know.
• No Periods, Period: This is something the author really doesn't want to write about.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: Subverted early on in the series when some of Spider-Woman's male enemies make lewd comments when they first meet her. After that, they focus solely on fighting her, and even the villains who hit on her immediately start attacking.
• Not Good with Rejection: Supercharger murders a number of people who've criticized Spider-Woman on social media as a way of showing his "love" for her. When Spider-Woman reacts with disgust and horror, he goes completely off the deep end and decides to kill her for humiliating him and being a 'tease'.
• Obnoxious In-Laws: Gender Flipped with Ben Reilly's parents, who both detest Mary Jane and don't want her dating their son.
• Official Couple: Subverted in that Mary Jane and Peter Parker dated in the past, but never really clicked. And they never will, because Word of God says so.
• Oh, Crap!: Mary Jane has a full-blown panic attack in issue #94 when she learns that Jack O' Lantern escaped from jail and is stalking her. Although she won their previous encounters, they were both as close as she's ever been to getting killed and the second time nearly destroyed her entire identity.
• One Head Taller: Mary Jane is 5'4", and Randy is 5'10".
• One-Steve Limit:
  • Kenny "Kong" McFarlane, a Canon Immigrant from the Ultimate Spider-Man comics, also appears here briefly. However, since Ultimate Sleepwalker already had a character named Kenny as part of the cast, Kong's real name is Bruce.
  • Subverted by Blizzard, An Ice Person in Spider-Woman's Rogues Gallery. Spider-Woman now has two Blizzards on her enemies list, and she's not at all happy about it.
• Only in It for the Money: As Mary Jane finds out, getting psychiatric help for your mother isn't cheap. Hence why she forces herself to put up with Roderick Kingsley's borderline sexual harassment.
• The Ophelia: Philippe Bazin compares all the major players in a Mob War to characters from Hamlet. He considers Spider-Woman to be in the role of Ophelia, thinking that there's something off about her putting on a costume and risking her life for no apparent reward.
• Ordinary High-School Student: Mary Jane is one of these before her powers begin to manifest.
• Parents Know Their Children: How Maddie figures out Mary Jane's secret identity.
• Parental Substitute:
  • In addition to raising her own daughter and providing Maddie Watson with a place to stay, Anna Watson also serves as a second mother to Mary Jane.
  • Peter Parker's Uncle Ben acts like a father figure to Mary Jane after she suffers a Heroic BSoD, helping her deal with her problems and assuring her that his door's always open if she ever needs to talk to someone.
  • Mary Jane even sees Jonathan Caesar as this. While Mary Jane rationally knows that he was a criminal and did some awful things, he was so supportive and encouraging to her that she almost saw him as a father figure.
• Parttime Hero: Mary Jane is constantly trying to balance her schoolwork, her acting and modelling careers, the needs of her family and friends and her superhero activities. It's often a struggle for her, and she eventually suffers a nervous breakdown when everything comes crashing down around her.
• Patchwork Fic: The series borrows elements both from Peter Parker's and Jessica Drew's series, and heroes from Captain America to Iron Man all contribute villains to her Rogues Gallery.
• Perpetual Poverty: Mary Jane lives paycheck to paycheck, in no small part because she's a teenage university student who has to pay her own tuition and living expenses. It's not helped by her insistence on helping Anna support Maddie and pay for her therapy, or the fact that she's been shortchanged on her tuition payments both deliberately (by her father, out of spite) and accidentally (after the idiots at the bank fouled up her student loan application). Hence Mary Jane is constantly trying to find time for additional modelling or acting work to help pay the bills.
• Pick on Someone Your Own Size:
  • After being defeated by Spider-Woman, the Brothers Grimm develops a bizarre obsession with her and seeks to make her the "straight woman" in his act.
  • And then there's Jack O'Lantern, alias Steven Mark Levins, who views Spider-Woman as everything he hates about this world.
• The Pig-Pen: When Mary Jane is working at the New York Comic Con, she's distinctly uncomfortable with the disgusting smell of one particularly unhygenic fan who asks to pose with her. While she's willing to do it, Mary Jane doesn't tolerate him groping and kissing her, and gets him thrown out of the convention.
• Playing Both Sides: Jack O'Lantern does this with the New York mobs, using Phillip Watson as his proxy. Subverted in that Jack knows the mobs are going to realize they were played for fools, and are going to blame Phillip for it...
• Playing with Fire: Firebrand is a particularly psychotic version of this trope.
• Plucky Girl: She might be frustrated and miserable a lot of the time (at least at first), but Mary Jane continues to soldier on in spite of it all.
• Popularity Power: Completely inverted. The more of this you have, the lower your chances of showing up outside of the odd guest star appearance. The sole exception is Spider-Man, but even he doesn't get more than the odd cameo appearance.
• Portent of Doom: When she sees how stressed Mary Jane is, Tarot tries to do a tea leaf reading for her to help her relax. Unfortunately, the tea leaf readings give a series of very bad signs related to immediate danger and bad luck. Needless to say, it's not what either Tarot or Mary Jane were hoping for.
• Powered Armor: This is the source of Ms. Fortune's powers.
• Powers as Programs: The nanotechnology that's fused with the cells of Netshape's body are programmed with the abilities of various video game characters, including the Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, Duke Nukem, Donkey Kong and Kratos. By changing shape, he can give himself super speed, super strength, More Dakka, the ability to throw fireballs, etc.
• The Power of Hate: This is what enables Felicia to take control of Mayhem's body and powers, and also what allowed Mayhem to survive her initial defeat by Spider-Woman.
• Pragmatic Villainy: The Constrictor is a hired killer. When Spider-Woman tries to stop him from killing one of her friends, he swiftly defeats her, but leaves her alive, since he wasn't being paid to kill her.
• Prima Donna Director: Archibald Llewellyn, Mary Jane's director on a production of A Streetcar Named Desire is a pompous jerk who rubs most of his actors the wrong way. He goes out of his way to belittle and even humiliate Mary Jane, but she gets a sort of revenge when the critics give her a glowing review for her performance during the show's actual run.
• Professional Killer: Frank Payne was a standard mob hit man before he got himself a costume and became the Constrictor. Believe it or not, he's keeping up with the times, since your standard hired gun in black is rapidly going the way of the VCR, the typewriter, cartridge-based video gaming, and the TV antenna.
• Proud Beauty: Mary Jane knows how hot she is, and takes great pride in it.
• Psycho Electro:
  • Completely inverted with Thunderbird, a member of the X-Men. In this version, rather than getting a bridge dropped on him the way his 616 counterpart did in the X-Men comics, Thunderbird is alive and well and possesses the power to generate and control electricity. His brother is also part of the group, serving as The Big Guy for the X-Men when they team up with Spider-Woman to help rescue her family from the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.
  • Played dreadfully straight with Supercharger. Good grief...
• Psycho for Hire: The Constrictor is as cold and merciless as his namesake.
• Psychopathic Manchild: The Brothers Grimm definitely counts as one of these.
• Psycho Psychologist: Dr. Karla Sofen, alias Moonstone, is a rather disturbing example. Not only has she enabled other supervillains to commit their crimes so she can study them, but she's also become a supervillain herself to gain a better understanding of what makes villains tick.
• Psychotic Smirk: Jack O'Lantern has one of these carved into the front face of his pumpkin mask.
• Puberty Superpower: The reason Mary Jane's powers didn't activate at the same time as Peter's was because of the differences between their genomes and the different altered powers of the spiders that bit them. Mary Jane's abilities were set to activate after a specific point in her lifespan, namely around the time she turned nineteen years old.
• Put the "Laughter" in "Slaughter": Nothing like a little murder, death and suffering to make a Jack O'Lantern smile.
• Pyromaniac: Firebrand is an especially dangerous one, since his powers increase with his rage.
• The Real Heroes:
  • Spider-Woman has helped them and been helped in turn, most notably when she's gone up against Firebrand. While the firefighters deal with the blazes Firebrand has started and rescue the people he's threatened, Spider-Woman keeps the flame-spitting lunatic off their back so they can do their jobs without becoming victims themselves.
  • And then there's New York police detective Kris Keating, who pulls a Big Damn Heroes moment in rescuing two of Harvey Broxtel's victims on his own without any superhero getting involved.
• Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Mary Jane would call bullshit on this trope if she was ever confronted with it. She's generally a "girly girl", but she's also an ass-kicking superheroine with a Rogues Gallery as long as her arm.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Andrew Reilly gives Mary Jane a pretty blunt one, before openly threatening her if she keeps dating Ben.
  • Jack O'Lantern gives one to Spider-Woman after he defeats her in the second Annual. She later returns the favor by giving him one after defeating him in issue #30.
  • Mary Jane gets another one from Randy's mother Louise when she mistakenly thinks that Mary Jane cheated on Randy, calling Mary Jane a whore and a spoiled pageant winner who's finally getting called on her bullshit.
• Reconstruction: Of traditional superhero comics. Efforts are frequently made to justify various superhero tropes and examine how the world would develop if they really existed. Some of the larger trends in recent years, such as Writing for the Trade, are also notably absent.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Apache brothers Thunderbird and Warpath are like this for the X-Men. The friendly, outgoing Thunderbird is Blue, while his more restrained, Hot-Blooded older brother Warpath is Red.
• Refusal of the Call: Kitty refused the appeals from both the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, wishing that everyone would quit giving her grief over mutant powers she never really wanted in the first place and can hardly find any real use for.
• Related in the Adaptation: As noted in "Adaptation Species Change", the Chameleon is reimagined as Mystique's brother.
• Resentful Guardian: Phillip felt this way about Mary Jane from the moment she was born, since she was the daughter he actually got instead of the son he always wanted. He also blamed little Mary Jane for being another mouth to feed when he was struggling to improve his business.
• Retcon: Done a few times, mostly to fix continuity screw-ups:
  • When the Donald Gill Blizzard was introduced, Jared initially forgot that he had already established the Gregor Shapanka Blizzard as an Iron Man villain. Shapanka later appeared as the second Blizzard, determined to kill Donald Gill for stealing his identity, and readily extending his grudge to Spider-Woman once she gets in his way.
  • Flash Thompson is initially the one who saves Liz Allan from being harassed by Harvey Broxtel at a Midtown High dance. However, this was completely at odds with his Dirty Coward portrayal in Ultimate Sleepwalker. Hence the retcon that it was Kong, not Flash, who saved Liz.
• The Reveal:
  • Mary Jane eventually learns that she's not a mutant, and that her powers were caused by being bitten by one of the other spiders that was in the same glass cage as the one that bit Peter Parker.
  • And then there's the revelation of who Jack O'Lantern truly is: Steven Mark Levins, uncle to Kitty Pryde and Ben Reilly.
• Revenge Through Corruption: Jack O' Lantern tries to use a combination of Mind Rape and More than Mind Control to destroy Spider-Woman's identity and inspire her to become his supervillain heir.
• Revenge by Proxy:
  • When Jack O'Lantern's true identity is revealed, a few of the friends and family of his victims go after his own family members out of revenge.
  • The Squid and Ms. Fortune not only try to kill Harry Osborn for Norman Osborn driving the Squid's father to suicide, but they are also quite happy to kill several of Harry's friends to really make him suffer.
• Roadside Wave: Mary Jane has this happen to her multiple times. The first two are especially bad, as they contribute to the Humiliation Conga that eventually culminates in her having a nervous breakdown.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: When she seemingly died, Brigid O'Reilly eventually came back as...well...Mayhem. From then on, she became obsessed with getting revenge on the people who made her that way.
• Rock Bottom: Mary Jane often wonders how things could possibly get any worse, or what else could possibly happen to her. The next scene immediately cuts to someone or something that will make things worse for her.
• Rogues Gallery: Mary Jane builds up a massive one over the series. So far Spider-Woman has tangled with the likes of Blizzard, Will O' the Wisp, the Brothers Grimm, Firebrand, Polestar, Tarot, the Constrictor, Jack O' Lantern, Moonstone, Supercharger, Joystick, Boomerang, Mayhem, 8-Ball, Netshape, Black Mamba, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Swarm, Scorpia, Tendril, the Squid and Ms. Fortune. The speed with which Spider-Woman gained her rogues gallery is Lampshaded, as is the fact that there seemed to be enough costumed criminals in New York to form a Rogues Gallery for every hero that operates there.
• Rogues Gallery Showcase: The third Halloween Special shows the dreams of every one of Spider-Woman's major enemies introduced up to that point.
• Rogues' Gallery Transplant: Since Mary Jane didn't have any actual rogues gallery in the comics, the author had to create one for her. Her enemies are stolen from heroes ranging from Iron Man to Spider-Man to the Hulk to the X-Men. In-universe, Gregor Shapanka is the first Blizzard, an enemy of Iron Man. However, now that Spider-Woman's thwarted his attempts to get revenge on Donald Gill, the second Blizzard, Shapanka quickly develops a grudge against her too.
• Room Full of Crazy: The Brothers Grimm's hideout is one of these, with its bizarre purple and white stripes painted on the walls, demented furniture, and hideous paintings depicting various superheroes suffering all kinds of hideous fates. Ronald Hilliard, a teenage fan of Spider-Woman, begins turning his bedroom into one of these when he covers every available inch of it with pictures of Spider-Woman he downloads off the Internet.
• Run the Gauntlet: Reconstructed when Will O' the Wisp tries doing this with several of Spider-Woman's other enemies to get revenge on her. Jack O' Lantern points out that having all of the villains attack Spider-Woman at once likely wouldn't work any better than attacking her one at a time, since they'd all get in each other's way. Jack further notes that most of Spider-Woman's enemies wouldn't have the inclination or the patience to train together until they could take Spider-Woman on as a team. Jack advises the Wisp to try and determine how to best use the talents of each individual teammate in a more well-thought out plan. Unfortunately for Spider-Woman, the Wisp is taking Jack's advice to heart.
• Samaritan Syndrome: Being a costumed superhero is only partly responsible for Mary Jane falling into this. Her conscience forces her to take on a lot of challenges in her normal life, sometimes against her friends' advice, and she's pushing herself far harder than anyone could have reasonably expected her to.
• Sanity Slippage: Jack O'Lantern is a curious example. It turns out that he's always been a psychopathic monster on the inside, but his crimes become increasingly violent and destructive as the series progresses. Jack goes from bank robberies to killing sprees to holding dozens of hostages to orchestrating a bloody city-wide gang war to creating a new supervillain crime syndicate. Even in jail, he's fantasizing about carving up human heads the way people do Halloween pumpkins. As of this writing, he's now also in jail, raving insanely as he hallucinates about everything from screaming witches to exploding skeletons to demonic bats to flaming pumpkins. In particular, he constantly sees hallucinations of giant human-headed spiders. Sometimes the spiders have Mary Jane's head, and sometimes they have Spider-Woman's head.
• Scary Scorpions: Scorpia viciously beats Spider-Woman during their first encounter, and leaves without a scratch.
• Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up: Firebrand got worse as he grew up, going from being a bully to arrested for viciously beating his former victims to being transformed into a literal Pyromaniac who reveled in the sick thrill of burning down the houses of innocent people.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: When Roderick Kingsley gropes Mary Jane, she hits him hard enough to break his nose and threatens to sue him. He merely smirks and points out that he pays his lawyers top dollar to make sure these types of problems are swept under the rug.
• Secret Identity Apathy: The Brothers Grimm want to use Spider-Woman as their masterpiece and feel that learning her true identity will ruin that since they want her to be a symbol instead of a person.
• Secret-Identity Identity: A central theme of the series. Putting on a mask and fighting crime actually helps Mary Jane grow as a person and let out other parts of her personality.
• Secret-Keeper: Peter Parker and his Uncle Ben become one for Mary Jane, and she in turn becomes one for Peter. Later, her mother Maddie, her boyfriend Randy, and her friend Liz also learn about her secret identity.
• Serial Killer: Supercharger, the Brothers Grimm and Tendril all take on this role. They also target Mary Jane, either in her civilian identity or as Spider-Woman.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: Mary Jane and Randy sing Barry White lyrics to one another during an intimate moment at his new apartment. They look into each other's eyes and know what's about to happen. The scene then cuts immediately to Spider-Woman swinging to Four Freedoms Plaza while thinking that she didn't mean to spend the night at Randy's place.
• Sexy Santa Dress: For her Christmas Eve date with Randy Robertson, Mary Jane wears a red sweater, a green jumper, white thigh-high stockings, knee-high black Santa boots and a sassy little Santa hat.
• Shadow Archetype: Putting on a mask and becoming Spider-Woman allowed Mary Jane to come to terms with her anger and let out other parts of her personality, making her grow and mature as a person in the process. Putting on a mask and becoming Jack O'Lantern allowed the person wearing the pumpkin to indulge his darkest fantasies, making him go completely over the edge in the process.
• Shipper on Deck: Randy's grandmother Martha Robertson takes a shine to Mary Jane after meeting her, and encourages their relationship. Martha even smooths things over with Randy's parents when they dislike Mary Jane.
• Ship Sinking: When Mary Jane and Peter have learned each others' secret identities, they feel a special bond and briefly wonder if they could have ever gotten together. They then burst out laughing at the sheer lunacy of the idea and scoff that it could have happened in "another lifetime, maybe!"
• Shock and Awe: Spider-Woman's bioeletric "sting" blasts are an example of this trope.
• Shockingly Expensive Bill: Phillip Watson turns out to have been a huge tax cheat. When he's dead, Maddie gets hit with the $40,000 he owes in back taxes. She applies for innocent spouse relief, but is denied. Mary Jane resolves to not go to university and instead get a full-time job to help Maddie pay it off. She pays everything off at once when she wins $50,000 at a beauty pageant during Spring Break in Daytona Beach.
• Shout-Out:
  • Mary Jane has a strong knowledge of theater history, which suits her as a Drama major. The subtitle of the series is also a Shout Out to the Ace of Base song of the same name.
  • When Mary Jane is waiting for Ben Reilly to pick her up so they can go to a fancy party at the Plaza Hotel and sees just how hot Ben looks in his tuxedo and starts drooling, Ben only grins and says:
    Ben: Face it, Tigress-you just hit the jackpot!
  • At one point, Mary Jane steps in to prevent a fat woman from bullying a hapless shoe salesman.
  • As noted by one reviewer and confirmed by Word of God, Tendril is heavily based on Patton Parnell from the Spider-Verse event.
  • When Nate Grey appears in an arc guest-starring the X-Men, he's struggling with Power Incontinence and is fleeing both from the X-Men (because of what he thinks is an Accidental Murder) and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (who want to exploit him for his power.) The arc was inspired by Jared's interpretation of Phil Collins' classic song Don't Lose My Number. When he's on the run, Nate uses the alias "Billy Collins" as a reference to both the song's main character and the man who wrote it.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Spider-Woman gives Jack O'Lantern an epic one of these in issue #48, after she narrowly breaks out of the drug-fueled Heroic BSoD he tried to force her into. Jack's less than pleased.
• Sibling Team: Spider-Woman and Spider-Man come together to take on Jack O' Lantern and Spider-Woman's clone in the Grand Finale. Mary Jane and Peter aren't related, but they're Like Brother and Sister due to both having spider-powers and being superheroes.
• Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Mary Jane has long, fire-red hair and bright green eyes.
• Silver Fox: Mary Jane dresses as Mrs. Claus in order to substitute as a female Mall Santa when the men who do it aren't available. At least one boy remarks on how pretty Mrs. Claus is, much to his mother's surprise.
• Sins of Our Fathers: The Squid and Ms. Fortune are out for Harry Osborn's head, after Norman Osborn drove the Squid's father to suicide.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Mary Jane has gotten onto the bad side of Carol Jannetty, a grossly fat Brawn Hilda who enjoys bullying those around her. They've crossed paths several times, the latest of which ends up with Mary Jane losing a potentially breakthrough acting role.
• Slut-Shaming: Mary Jane does this to Felicia when they get into an argument at a high-class party.
• The Smurfette Principle: Aside from the Invisible Woman, who's only in town half the time anyway, Spider-Woman is New York's only female superhero. This applies to her Rogues Gallery too, as she has almost twice as many male enemies as female ones. More generally, Maggie Beck observes that men generally tend to outnumber women as both superheroes and supervillains. The female heroes' rogues galleries mostly tend to be male as well.
• Snuff Film: Although these are never actually shown, it's mentioned a few times that the New York crime syndicates do produce them. They tend to be purchased by the same sick freaks who pay for child pornography, which is another "product" the syndicates regularly produce.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Zigzagged by Mary Jane.
  • She doesn't really Wangst about how her beauty as a curse, and in fact she actually feels a certain amount of pleasure in getting a lot of attention from guys when she's at a party or on the beach. What is a problem is when her beauty leads her to attract electrically-powered whackjobs who don't like to take "No" for an answer.
  • Mary Jane is now running into this in her acting career, in that she's having a hard time being considered for serious, intelligent roles because she's seen as The Brainless Beauty. This may also be used as an excuse for directors to turn her down, even when she nails an audition, because of the influence of producers who have a grudge against her.
• The Social Expert: Mary Jane is skilled at endearing herself to people, making small talk at large parties, and even faking being a Damsel in Distress so she can escape and suit up as Spider-Woman without blowing her Secret Identity.
• Song Fic: In the final issue, Randy starts singing Barry White's iconic song Can't Get Enough Of Your Love, when he and Mary Jane are having an intimate moment. Mary Jane sings some of the lyrics back at him, and they both know what's going to come next.
• So Proud of You: At the start of issue #25, Spider-Woman is a physical and emotional wreck after getting her ass kicked by Jack O'Lantern and seeing her father Phillip being murdered by the pumpkin-headed lunatic. Her mother's reminder of everything she's succeeded at, and everything else she's done, goes a long way to restoring MJ's spirits.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Completely averted. Spider-Woman does not acquire any new powersets or power boosts, and while she's become a more experienced crimefighter her supervillain enemies have kept pace with her in terms of their fighting skills.
• Spear Counterpart: In this universe, the Chameleon is known as Alistair Darkholme, the brother of the X-Men villain Mystique. They have the same mutant shapeshifting powers, although Alistair uses his powers for espionage, crime and personal gain while Mystique uses hers for ideological terrorism.
• Spider-Man Send-Up: The series is very much this. Mary Jane ticks many of this trope's boxes, such as the arthropod-derived powers, being a Born Unlucky Butt-Monkey whose life's gotten even more complicated because she's now a superhero, having an extremely bad case of Chronic Hero Syndrome and Samaritan Syndrome, fighting crime with a secret identity, being an Ordinary College Student who has to Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World, typically doing street-level heroics and having Combo Platter Powers.
• Spin-Off: While it's set in the same universe as Ultimate Sleepwalker, Ultimate Spider-Woman has an almost entirely new cast of characters.
• Squick: Mary Jane feels this in-universe from the way Roderick Kingsley leers at her, but she doesn't do anything because she needs the modelling work he offers her. As Spider-Woman, she has this reaction when she learns that Supercharger has been killing people who criticize her.
• Stalker with a Crush: After Spider-Woman fights to stop Jack O' Lantern from robbing a high-society party, teenage guest Ronald Hilliard gets it into his head that she was there to protect him specifically. He finds himself constantly thinking about her, and begins downloading every picture he can find of her on the Internet, which he then uses to wallpaper his bedroom. And it got worse from there...
• Stalker without a Crush: Jack O' Lantern does this to Mary Jane multiple times. He does everything from send her threatening letters to break into her house to leave mocking jack-in-the-box devices to somehow enter her bedroom while she's asleep and write even more threatening messages on the wall. He also does this to other people like Kitty Pryde the second time he escapes from jail.
• The Stations of the Canon: Subverted with Spider-Man. Many of the stations of Spider-Man's canon are crossed, albeit with a twist. Mary Jane is bitten by a second spider at the same time as Peter Parker; Aunt May is killed in Peter's Death by Origin Story, while Uncle Ben lives; Spider-Man successfully saves Gwen Stacy's life when the Green Goblin kicks her off the bridge, leading to her remaining Peter's one true love and ensuring that Peter and MJ never get together; the Green Goblin is turned into a paraplegic vegetable rather than being killed when he's impaled by his glider; and stories like the Clone Saga and anything to do with symbiotes will simply never happen.
• Stepford Smiler: Mary Jane does this repeatedly, whether to keep up appearances or to avoid upsetting her friends and family. Sometimes, she has to resort to all her acting skills to pull it off.
• Stern Teacher: Dr. Curt Connors is one of the most popular professors at Empire State University. His classes are highly sought after because of his ability to clearly explain complicated scientific principles to even the least scientifically-minded students. He doesn't pull his punches when he doesn't think his students are living up to their potential, though.
• Straight Gay: Anna Watson's lesbianism is casually mentioned by Mary Jane in a one-off conversation with Kitty, explaining that Anna doesn't make a big deal about it because she doesn't want her homosexuality to be the only thing people notice about her. As a mutant who consciously tries to avoid getting caught up in the drama surrounding mutant politics, Kitty can sympathize. It's later subverted when Anna finds that she isn't really attracted to women either. Mary Jane correctly realizes that Anna is in fact asexual.
• Stress Vomit: Mary Jane does this more than once after particularly traumatic events, notably when she's Forced to Watch as the Constrictor murders Phil Urich or when Jack O' Lantern gives her a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown after she sees him kill her father.
• Stock Superhero Day Jobs: Mary Jane is a college student in her civilian life.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Mary Jane starts out much more on the Ice side of this, with the Sugar side well-hidden. Being Spider-Woman and the support of her friends shift her more and more to the Sugar side of things, to the point that the Ice part is more internal than anything else and she has a much better grip on her emotions.
• Super Loser: Netshape is viewed as a pathetic loser for his geeky tendencies, and his attempt to make himself into a bad boy by becoming a supervillain. The chip on his shoulder motivates Netshape to go on a killing spree.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham:
  • According to Word of God, Iron Man, Doctor Strange, The Mighty Thor and The Avengers are not based in New York the way they are in the comics. This trope also applies due to the sheer number of supervillains, meaning that each hero usually has their hands full with their own Rogues Gallery. Not that some of Spider-Woman's enemies don't take precautions, of course. The Brothers Grimm threatens to murder all his hostages if anyone but Spider-Woman tries to stop him, while Jack O' Lantern arranges it so all of New York's other heroes are tied up with the Tomorrow Legion and can't stop him.
  • Peter tells Mary Jane this is also why most superheroes remain solo operators and don't get together in larger, organized groups. The civilian authorities have largely come to tolerate superheroes because they don't pose a large threat to the social status quo and mostly deal with criminals and threats that the authorities can't handle on their own. It's one thing for the heroes to team up against criminal organizations and Villain Team Ups, but it's quite another if they were to decide to start using their powers to make the rules.
• Super Doc: Multiple examples:
  • Dr. Jonas Harrow is a brilliant physician who's adept at treating everything from strange ailments to technological implants to psychic curses. He focuses his talents on treating supervillains and other wealthy criminals, getting a king's ransom for his services.
  • More benignly, the Beast is the X-Men's Combat Medic and a genius at figuring out how to treat unusual superhuman physiologies that conventional medicine can't (and in sometimes won't, in the case of mutants) treat. When Spider-Woman needs Jack O' Lantern's tracking device surgically removed from her body in the Grand Finale, the Beast does the operation with help from Reed Richards. He explains to Spider-Woman that it's the least the X-Men can do for her helping them save Nate Grey from the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.
• Superhero Paradox: Reading between the lines, averting this trope has become a major theme of the series. Almost all of Spider-Woman's enemies became villains through their own circumstances and only became part of her Rogues Gallery after she crossed paths with them. Oftentimes, things would be a lot worse if she had never been involved to begin with.
• Swapped Roles: Discussed. Randy hates seeing the toll superheroing takes on Mary Jane's mental health. He's considered asking her to consider hanging up her webs and retiring as a hero, but he can't bring himself to do it. He realizes it'd be hypocritical of him, since he'd probably be doing the exact same thing as Mary Jane if he was the one with superpowers and she was the one comforting him.
• Tabloid Melodrama: After Jack O'Lantern was exposed as her uncle Steven Mark Levins, his connection to Kitty Pryde was revealed by the Daily Globe, along with the fact that she's a mutant. Now Kitty's fallen victim to mutant racist harassment, including getting threatening letters in the mail. She's humiliated, upset and scared, but Mary Jane is just pissed off and more than ready to extend the Mama Bear part of her personality to anyone who goes after Kitty.
• Take That!: Given the incredibly negative reaction to the Twilight series among people outside its target demographic, you'd expect the series to be depicted negatively, right? Wrong-this trope is subverted in that a Take That! is not directed against the series. Since Mary Jane is more or less in its target demographic, she actually enjoys the books.
• Talking to Themself: The Brothers Grimm apparently has two personalities, both of which constantly argue with one another. But is that what's really going on?
• Tarot Troubles: When Mary Jane visits her in prison, Tarot offers to give her a reading. Although she's somewhat reluctant at first, Mary Jane eventually agrees and Tarot reads out the cards for her. The results of the reading, which allude to Mary Jane's Hidden Depths, are as much a surprise to Tarot as to her.
• Thematic Rogues Gallery: While Mary Jane's enemies do not have much of a common theme in terms of their abilities aside from being street-level villains, many of them have embraced different parts of their identity in different ways. The Brothers Grimm define themselves as twisted performers, Netshape is an obsessive Loony Fan who takes his geek culture so seriously he follows up on his threats to murder creators who've offended him, Supercharger is obsessed with his twisted crush on Spider-Woman, Firebrand believes his family wealth and influence give him the right to make poorer people suffer, Scorpia loves the idea of being an Ax-Crazy supervillain, Black Mamba took the chance to be something more than an often-abused sex toy, Moonstone fully embraced the supervillain role she took up to study it, Joystick became obsessed with finding new thrills and highs, Polestar became embittered over his mistreatment by his family, Will O' the Wisp considers himself a blameless victim, and Jack O' Lantern saw himself as a sick, twisted monster and decided to act the part.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave:
  • Subverted in that Mary Jane continually declines Aunt Anna's offers for her to live with the rest of the Watson family, since she feels like she'd be mooching. Eventually, Mary Jane moves in when she can't afford to stay on her own, but she makes a point of actively contributing to the household by doing chores, getting groceries, and more.
  • Also subverted by Mary Jane's mother Maddie Watson. Anna let Maddie stay after her brother Phillip kicked Mary Jane and Maddie out of the house, and Anna's never left. However, Anna is fine with having Maddie around, and Maddie has gotten a job to help with the bills.
• To Create a Playground for Evil: This is Jack O'Lantern's ultimate goal and vision for the Tommorow Legion.
• Token Minority: Averted by the X-Men when they guest star in the first Annual. No less than four minority characters are involved. Along with the black Storm, there are three First Nations characters-the Cheyenne Forge and the Apache brothers Warpath and Thunderbird. Unlike the 616 version, who was killed in one of his first missions and possessed Super-Strength as his power, this version of Thunderbird has electricity powers and is an all-around nice guy. James and John Proudstar are both alive and well, and make a highly effective team in combat.
• Tonight, Someone Dies: The word-for-word title of Chapter 111. It's Spider-Woman's clone, who is executed by Jack O' Lantern for being outmatched by Spider-Man.
• Took a Level in Badass: A character's ranking on the 616 pecking order doesn't count for anything here. Characters who might be small-timers in 616 can have counterparts who are major players in Earth-2706.
• Tracking Chip: During one of their battles, Jack O'Lantern implanted a microscopic tracking chip in Spider-Woman's back. It gives him a complete readout on all of her movements, including in her civilian life as Mary Jane Watson. He quite literally knows where she's been every minute of every hour of every day, for over two years.
• Trapped by Gambling Debts: Ravencroft psychiatrist Bart Hamilton ends up owing some $70,000 to the mob because he can't stop betting on college and professional sports and can't pick a winner to save his life. HYDRA pays off his debts in exchange for him helping to free several of Ravencroft's supervillain prisoners.
• Triple Shifter: Mary Jane's trying to balance school, superheroing, money, work and sleep takes its toll both on her grades and on her nerves.
• Troubled, but Cute: Nate Grey has this bad, with especial emphasis on the "troubled" part.
• Tsundere: Mary Jane has some anger problems, alternately coming off as cold and aloof or hot-tempered and angry. She's eventually called out on it by Harry Osborn, and her kinder side begins to come out more and more as the series goes on. It could alternately be seen as Sugar-and-Ice Personality, since her troubles displace her emotions into one of either extreme, depending on situation.
• Tuckerization: Mary Jane's maternal grandfather appears in one issue, a Cool Old Guy named Stanley Lieber.
• Twerp Sweating: Andrew Reilly tries this on Mary Jane, reminding her that he has a lot of powerful friends and that he can make her life very miserable if she doesn't stay away from his son. Ben himself is not amused when he finds out about it.
• Two Beings, One Body: The Brothers Grimm are eventually revealed to be this, two twin brothers who were fused into one being in their mother's womb. They now share one body and each contribute some of its DNA.
• Unable to Support a Wife: Subverted in that one of the reasons Randy's parents don't like Mary Jane is because she wants to be an actress and a model. They're concerned that Randy might end up having to support her by himself, without her contributing equally to the relationship.
• Understanding Boyfriend: When Randy finds out about Mary Jane's secret identity, he largely comes to accept it...until he finds out that Jack O' Lantern knows her true identity. Now he's torn between anger at Mary Jane for letting her loved ones end up in danger and trying to support her because of her own obvious guilt and distress over this fact.
• The Unfavorite: Polestar was like this growing up. In between being constantly ridiculed for not being as athletic as his older brother, or as academically gifted as his younger sister, Polestar came to hate and resent his family so much that when he developed superhuman powers, he became a villain simply to humiliate and embarrass them.
• The Unfettered: Jack O'Lantern sees himself as one of these. He remarks on the irony of needing to dress in a ghoulish costume to reveal just what he really is, and mocks the pathetic, mindless cattle who are content to muddle through their lives while stubbornly clinging to their masks. Seeing Spider-Woman protect them only makes him hate her all the more.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Subverted by some of the people Spider-Woman helps, who were occasionally just as endangered by her reckless behavior during her early fights and have a more justifiable reason for calling her out on it.
• Unholy Matrimony: Subverted with Tarot after she finds the Bookworm and nurses him back to health. They become lovers and combine their desires for vengeance on the people who tormented them, but Tarot ultimately can't bring herself to do it, especially when she realizes that the Bookworm's demonic magic is interfering with her own tarot powers.
• Unsatisfiable Customer: Being called in to work on her night off might not be so bad for Mary Jane, but when she's already extremely stressed out about her falling grades, her lack of sleep, her trying to find more acting and modelling work, and her mother's mental health, the nitpicking and obnoxious customers she has to deal with become more than her nerves can take.
• Uptown Guy: Ben Reilly finds himself drifting into this trope, as his parents and uncle dislike Mary Jane intensely. His mother thinks Mary Jane is a stuck-up snob, his uncle thinks she's a hypocrite, and his father thinks she's a Gold Digger.
• Villain Decay: Notably averted, as villains who were introduced early on have kept pace with Spider-Woman and remain deadly threats throughout the series. In fact, the author will sometimes go out of his way to subvert this trope by giving victories to villains who run the risk of suffering from it.
• The Villain Knows Where You Live: Jack O' Lantern does this to Mary Jane multiple times, as does Wesley Danson, who tries to sell her out to the Brothers Grimm.
• Villain of the Week: Done repeatedly, as Mary Jane's Rogues Gallery is constantly expanding and she has fought almost all of her supervillain enemies at least twice each.
• Villainous Breakdown: Jack O'Lantern is reduced to snarling rage following the above-mentioned Shut Up, Hannibal! moment.
• Villainous Crush:
  • Supercharger to Spider-Woman...at least at first. He went completely off the deep end after Spider-Woman expressed her disgust at his actions and called him a freak...and now he's torn between wanting to make her his own and simply killing her for spitting on him despite everything he did for her.
  • More generally, this trope is Deconstructed to a point when Mary Jane sees how some of the people posting in Vincent Gonzalez's online hate campaign express their desire to sexually assault Spider-Woman. She's reminded of the crude sexual remarks some of her supervillain enemies made when they first met her. These remarks are painful and disturbing for the people who actually receive them. Mary Jane is especially embittered by the fact that as a woman hero she gets much more of this than male heroes like Spider-Man or Daredevil typically would.
• Villains Out Shopping: How Jack O'Lantern is introduced. He goes to a local restaurant and... orders some dinner. In full costume.
• Villain Takes an Interest: Jack O'Lantern is intrigued by the anger and recklessness Spider-Woman displayed when she first became a superhero, and he tries to revive that anger and violence as part of a larger plan to make her his heir as the next Jack O'Lantern.
• Visionary Villain: Jack O'Lantern's ultimate goal is to use his fellow supervillains in the Tommorow Legion To Create a Playground for Evil.
• Waif-Fu: Both subverted and played straight. Spider-Woman is a slim teenage girl who typically employs this fighting style, but her impressive superhuman strength allows her to slug it out with the best of them.
• Wacky Fratboy Hijinx: Subverted by Mark Raxton and his fraternity brothers, who despise the stereotype of drunken fraternity hooligans created by the American Pie and National Lampoon movies. While Mark jokingly refers to this trope when he first meets Mary Jane at Fire Island, his fraternity brothers have more important things to do, like performing charity work or indulging their musical interests.
• Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World: University student by day, crime-fighting heroine by night...and on multiple other occasions, where Mary Jane often is halfway to a hiding place where she can change costume before she even realizes what she's doing.
• Weak-Willed: Black Mamba's first victim is easily overwhelmed by her powers because of this trope. Spider-Woman's strong will helped her resist Mamba's powers, but it didn't make her immune to them.
• Web Serial Novel: The series is based on a comic book, and features regular monthly updates like a comic book, but since the author is so bad at drawing he makes Christian Weston Chandler look like Leonardo da Vinci, it's presented in prose form.
• We Can Rule Together: The irony of Jack O'Lantern's enmity with Spider-Woman is that she's one of the only young people he knows that he thinks would be a worthy heir to his legacy as a supervillain. Hence his interest in trying to break her down mentally, to the point where he tries to destroy her very identity.
• We Will Meet Again: Several of Spider-Woman's enemies swear this to her after she interferes with their plans. They always fulfill their pledges, much to her regret.
• What Have I Become?: This trope pretty much sent Brigid O'Reilly over the edge.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: This is Kitty's attitude towards her mutant powers.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Early on, Spider-Woman's emotions often got the better of her during her fights and she very nearly hurt a number of innocent bystanders with her reckless behavior. Things improve once she realizes what she's doing and starts exercising more self-control.
  • It comes back in full force when Randy learns about her secret identity and also that Jack O' Lantern knows who she really is. Part of him is outraged at Mary Jane putting her loved ones in danger by letting Jack find out her true identity, but another part sympathizes with her over her obvious guilt and distress.
• Where da White Women At?: Subverted by Mary Jane's relationship with Randy Robertson. No one has so far commented on their relationship except Randy's parents, and their dislike of Mary Jane has nothing to do with race. Rather, they're less than pleased with Mary Jane's career goals, wondering if Randy would have to support Mary Jane if she couldn't find good paying work, not to mention their own discomfort with the fact that she's using her looks to sell products as a model.
• Who's Laughing Now?:
  • Netshape is angry at being viewed as a loser villain because of his geeky tendencies, and decides to go on a killing spree at the New York Comic Con, targeting many of the same people who used to ridicule him.
  • And then there's Swarm, a washed-up former supervillain who was subsequently paroled. Ridiculed by his former coworkers for his crackpot theories, and humiliatingly publicly fired by his boss, he...didn't take it well.
• Why Couldn't You Be Different?: When his wife became pregnant, Phillip Watson eagerly awaited the birth of what he expected would be the son he always wanted. What he actually got was a daughter. It all went downhill from there.
• Wicked Cultured: Jack O'Lantern really enjoys his steak tartare and chardonnay.
• Women Are Wiser: Subverted with Mary Jane. She's a fierce warrior, a compassionate and supportive friend, a determined Go-Getter Girl and has demonstrable Socialite skills, but her Break the Cutie upbringing, constant Butt-Monkey misfortunes, her Triple Shifter tendencies to put too much pressure on herself and her Chronic Hero Syndrome have also made her rather high-maintenance, occasionally verging on a Nervous Wreck. She often needs boyfriends like Ben Reilly and Randy Robertson, and father figures like Ben Parker, to help her cope with her neuroses.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Spider-Woman pretends to finally give up when Tendril has her trapped. When he lowers his guard, she blasts him in the face at point-blank range and escapes while he's reeling.
• The Worm That Walks: Swarm is a massive colony of wasps linked by a single Hive Mind. They don't have a single body, although they can combine to form different shapes like a face for Buck Mitty, the guy whose mind has become linked with the wasps.
• Worthy Opponent: The Constrictor is a cold-blooded assassin, but he'll commend the fighting skills of anyone who beats him. He even compliments Spider-Woman on having come a long way since the first time they fought, and ranks her with the likes of Spider-Man and Captain America for winning their rematch.
• Would Hit a Girl: Spider-Woman's enemies are all evil in their own ways, but even they know better than to assume Spider-Woman can't hold her own against them. Hence they have no problem throwing everything in their arsenals at her.
• Wretched Hive: New York City verges on this trope, as it has both the largest number of supervillains per capita and the highest overall crime rate in the entire country. Mary Jane mentions this as one of the reasons she starts teaching martial arts to Kitty, besides the fact that Kitty is a mutant who's more apt to be the victim of a hate crime.
• Xanatos Gambit: Jack O'Lantern launches one of these to set up his true Evil Plan. The beauty of it is that it would work no matter which crime syndicates were crippled, since destroying Philippe Bazin or Crimewave would have suited him just as well. Even if the gang war had petered out, he wouldn't really have lost anything, since he'd already covered his tracks.
• Yandere: A rare male example in Supercharger, who begins murdering people who dissed Spider-Woman online as a means of trying to show his affection for her. She is sickened, horrified, and Squicked out all at once. He later develops this attitude towards Spider-Woman herself when she disgustedly calls him a freak.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Mary Jane frequently gets this. Sometimes she's trying to relax from extremely stressful situations, only for her to be hit with something else that makes her even more upset.
• You Did Everything You Could: Mary Jane's friends and family have repeatedly told her that she's pushing herself too hard and that she doesn't have to do all the things she does, but her conscience won't allow her to let up.
• You Do NOT Want To Know: This is Kitty's explanation to Mary Jane when she asks why Kong can't bring his guitar along on their camping trip.
• "You!" Exclamation: This is Phillip Watson's reaction when he sees Jack O'Lantern's true face and realizes he's Steven Mark Levins, Kitty Pryde and Ben Reilly's uncle.
• You Have Failed Me: This is how the Spider-Woman clone dies - killed by Jack O' Lantern for failing to defeat Spider-Man.
• You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry!: Firebrand is an especially dangerous version, since his fires become hotter and more intense with his rage.

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