Abandoned Love: Whatever Happened to Peter and Mary Jane's Baby?

Every week, we will be examining comic book stories, plots and ideas that were abandoned by a later writer while still acknowledging that the abandoned story DID still happen. Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of Abandoned Love. Feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.

This week, we take a look at how Marvel resolved Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson having a baby.

Spectacular Spider-Man #220 has Peter and Mary Jane (who were a bit estranged as Peter was acting really erratic as the Clone Saga began, especially as he had recently discovered that he was dying of some mysterious ailment. He'd eventually be cured) reconcile...

Writer Tom DeFalco definitely went for the purple prose here. Also, did Sal Buscema and Bill Sienkiewicz just not draw one of Peter's feet in the above splash?

Now that they're reconciled, Mary Jane hits Peter with some major news...

Nine issues later, Mary Jane worries about whether being Spider-Man is a good thing for a father to be doing (note that she has also been stricken with some weird ailment that Peter and Ben Reilly must find an antidote for in the issue)...

It is this situation that causes Peter to quit as Spider-Man (one of many times he's quit)...

Fast forward roughly a year and the Spider-Man creators are ready to return Peter Parker to the book as Spider-Man. However, part of the idea of Peter and Mary Jane having a baby was that it would give them a good reason to LEAVE. Now that they were back, the baby suddenly didn't fit their plans.

So in Sensational Spider-Man #11, part 2 of the "Revelations" storyline that ended with Peter being Spider-Man again, Mary Jane is poisoned by a mysterious woman...

She then goes into labor...

In Amazing Spider-Man #418, we see that a mysterious bad guy is seeing Mary Jane's labor...

Later in the issue, Mary Jane appears to deliver a stillborn baby...

However, the mysterious woman we saw poisoning Mary Jane is there (now named Alison Mongrain), as we see her meet her mysterious employer...

The following issue, Peter Parker: Spider-Man #75, after Ben Reilly is revealed as the clone and then killed, Peter is officially Spider-Man again and he goes to visit his wife...

Okay, so the baby thing was pretty much dropped for the next year plus, but as you might imagine, fans couldn't help but think that the baby actually DIDN'T die, but was instead kidnapped by Norman Osborn in one of those elaborate plans to mess with Peter Parker that he seems to love so much. So the plot really hasn't been officially abandoned yet. More like "put off."

Marvel, of course, fed into this with sporadic check-ins on Mongrain on the road (well, on the water, that is, as she was on a yacht) in Europe, with teases that made it seem like she was talking about taking care of a baby but it turning out not to be. The Peter Parker clone Kaine was hot on her trail, as well (as he had a mad-on for Norman Osborn because of Osborn killing Ben Reilly).

Here's a bit from Amazing Spider-Man #434 (DeFalco was still on the book at this time)...

Joe Robertson began to try to track Mongrain down and finally found her in Amazing Spider-Man #440.

That brings us to Amazing Spider-Man #441, where the mysterious Alison Mongrain dies, but before she passes she seems to suggest what fans were thinking, that the baby (which Peter and Mary Jane were going to name May after Peter's Aunt) DIDN'T die!

That is what Spider-Man thinks, at least, although Mary Jane insists that her baby did, in fact, die...

So in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #97, Peter goes to rescue baby May and confronts Green Goblin, who says that the baby did, in fact, die (which would suggest that Norman Osborn killed Peter's baby, which is pretty messed up)...

Peter doesn't believe him and goes to where he thinks the baby is being held only to discover that the May who is alive is actually...

For more details on the death and life of Aunt May, read this old Abandoned an' Forsaked.

And so that is that, Peter and Mary Jane's baby died. Mongrain's cargo that the Scriers took turned out to be some magical object for the Gathering of Five storyline (where Maddie Franklin gained superpowers and Norman Osborn was driven temporarily insane).

That said, Tom DeFalco did a What If...? she DIDN'T die that launched a whole new series of stories starring Spider-GIRL...