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.

Well, we've finally reached a doubly major milestone in Mary Jane's comic book career. Her transformation into Red Sonja AND her farewell from the Spider-Man comics for a few years (she is mentioned in Amazing Spider-Man #208 and there is a couple in Daredevil #160 that LOOKS like Peter and Mary Jane, but that's it).

One of her last issues is an appearance is one of her most notable appearances of the era. The legendary creative team of Chris Claremont, John Byrne and Terry Austin got together for Marvel Team-Up #79, where Peter attends the Daily Bugle Christmas party (along with Clarke Kent, it appears) when what to our wondering eyes should appear, but Mary Jane Watson!

She's suddenly super friendly, even giving Peter a BIG kiss under the mistletoe...

When Peter is called away to an assignment, Mary Jane stows away...

This is the Mary Jane we've been missing for some time now. The vivacious, action-craving love interest.

When they get to the place and things are crazy, Peter ditches her...

Mary Jane follows him to investigate and finds a sword, instead....

And, naturally, is transformed into Red Sonja (Byrne draws one amazing Red Sonja, huh?)...

After the adventure is finished, Red Sonja returns Mary Jane's body to her...

Obviously, this was all just because they waned to replace a redhead with a redhead, but this was still an epic issue for Mary Jane.

After Peter stood up Mary Jane for the last time and she cut off all ties with him, Peter got caught up in a winding plot involving Aunt May's death being faked and the Burglar returning just in time for Amazing Spider-Man #200. That took up a lot of Peter's time, leaving little room for social interactions outside of his graduate student friends over in Spectacular Spider-Man.

Finally, though, after the long-running plot was resolved and Aunt May was alive again (just once again in the hospital), Mary Jane shows up for the first time in months in Spectacular Spider-Man #38 (by Bill Mantlo, Sal Buscema and Chic Stone) and we learn that apparently she's doing commercials now?

Almost at the same exact time, Mary Jane pops into Amazing Spider-Man #201 (by Marv Wolfman, Keith Pollard and Jim Mooney) just for some quick banter with Peter and one of Peter's new newspaper colleagues (this was during a period where Peter left the Daily Bugle to go work for another newspaper)...

Okay, so Mary Jane is now pretty much fully out of the book.

This is the last we'd see her for nearly three YEARS!

Next time, see what happens when Mary Jane returns!

We're up to Amazing Spider-Man #238 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!