In If Her Hair Was Still Red, I take a look at all of Mary Jane Watson's comic book appearances in chronological order (by date of publication). Mary Jane's progression as a character fascinates me.

Okay, the last time we checked in on Mary Jane, it was to see how her breakup with Peter Parker was being handled in the pages of Marvel Team-Up, a title that was a bit more cut off from the regular Spider-Man continuity. Before that, though, we looked at how Bill Mantlo used Spectacular Spider-Man as a way to make Mary Jane look a little bit more reasonable about her break-up with Peter. Now, after having Peter propose to Mary Jane and have her reject him, Marv Wolfman then had Peter embark on a tumultuous relationship with his first girlfriend, Betty Brant, who was now Betty Leeds (I covered the whole ridiculous romance here).

One of the big things in Mantlo's Spectacular Spider-Man issues was showing Mary Jane see Peter out with Betty and not feel too good about it.

Mantlo followed that up with Spectacular Spider-Man #26 (art by Jim Mooney and Frank Springer), where Mary Jane and Betty both end up at Peter's apartment and they size each other up a lot in the same way that Liz Allan and Betty sized each other up back in the day during Ditko and Lee's Spider-Man run.

However, in the following issue, which featured art by a young Frank Miller right before he took over art duties on Daredevil for the first time (amusingly, the letter column for Spectacular Spider-Man #30 specifically talked about how we were all seeing history made in front of our eyes with the debut of Miller. It's amazing to see someone go over the top in praise and be CORRECT), we see that Mantlo continues to avoid a stereotypical take on Mary Jane by having her and Betty work things off and become friends...

That same issue sees the villainous Carrion trash Peter's apartment...

When Peter's friends find out about his trashed apartment in the following issue, they are worried sick...

And when Peter (who had been temporarily blinded in a fight and now needed sunglasses to protect his sensitive eyes) shows up, see how Mary Jane looks past their awkward relationship situation to embrace him...

In the next issue, with Mooney back on pencils, Mary Jane is right there with Betty pulling together with Peter's other friends to fix his apartment for him...

Peter doesn't even get to see the fruit of their labors until three issues later...

That issue is significant, though, for the fact that it is the introduction of the other graduate students that Peter will be working with at Empire State University, which includes two possible love interests for Peter - Deb Whitman and Marcy Kane. Now that Mantlo has his own love interests for Peter, he basically drops Mary Jane as a supporting character.

Luckily, this was just in time for Marv Wolfman to apparently figure out where he went wrong with his Mary Jane take.

That will be the next installment!

We're up to Amazing Spider-Man #188 if you have any thoughts you'd like to share that I might share with the others in the next column!

Again, for everything, you can write me at brianc@cbr.com!