the plot: The headquarters of the Fantastic Five has just been rocked by the arrival of Apox, the Omega Skrull, and Peter Parker and Johnny Storm are badly injured, and it appears that Reed Richards, the "Big Brain", is dead. This is more than enough for May Parker, the ever-loving Spider-Girl to launch an assault on Apox. Franklin Storm, the Psi-lord, arrives to help May out, as does Felicity Hardy, the new Scarlet Spider, who's determined to become May's sidekick.

While the fight with Apox rages on, the wheel-chair bound Mary Jane spends the day with Felicia, Felicity's mother, and her partner Diana, while Alison Mongrain watches from the shadows. Meanwhile, the heroes are able to subdue Apox, and just as Franklin and May are about to share a romantic embrace, Peter informs Franklin that May is only fifteen, crushing May's dreams.

And on a train headed to New York, the man known as Kaine, Peter Parker's clone, ponders his revenge on Alison Mongrain.

the review: One of the strongest things about Spider-Girl is it's amazing supporting cast and endless flow of subplots, and this issue is rich with them. Spider-Girl makes great use of the Spider-cast, as well as other facets of the Marvel universe in ways that core-continuity titles do not, and regardless of what happens in this book I'll always love it for that.

Which brings us to this issue. It's not a bad one, per se, but it falls apart due to a weak main plot. There's never any doubt that the heroes are going to stop Apox, because, quite frankly, both the FF and Spidey have beaten guys worse than him in their sleep. Not to mention the fact that Apox is, as far as villains go, terribly uninteresting, you can see my problems. Aside from that, I thought the fight scenes were all right, and it's nice seeing the Human Torch, Spider-Girl, the Scarlet Spider and a couple more heroes taking on a baddie, even if he is a little bland.

The artwork by Ron Frenz is good. It's detailed and clear, and works very well on a book like this. In fact it's perfect on Spider-Girl, no doubt in part because of Tom DeFalco's and Frenz's long history as a writer-artist team together. I really liked it, though thought that Franklin's face looked a tad too cartoony on page 22, and that Frenz might have gone overboard with the Scarlet Spider's buttocks on page 14.

As always, I'm going to recommend this book, because even an issue like this that I didn't completely enjoy was still a heck of a lot of fun. Spider-Girl #47 gets *** out of *****.

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