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.

I have been showing Mary Jane's progression as a character over the years, and as a result, I have been sticking pretty closely to IN CONTINUITY stories as, well, obviously those are the ones that have the greatest impact on Mary Jane as a character, ya know? As a result, I just realized that I already passed past 1976 and was well into 1977 in Mary Jane's history. That's fine, but that means that I skipped over the out-of-continuity story, Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man, a special comic book produced by Marvel and DC Comics in 1976. It's a fair enough decision, to be frank, but at the same time, I think I'd still like to spotlight it, so here we are!

The idea was to pick a writer and an artist that had worked on both Superman and Spider-Man and in 1976, that literally could only be two guys, Gerry Conway (who had just recently moved to DC Comics from Marvel after his run on Amazing Spider-Man ended and was in the midst of returning to Marvel before going back to DC for a decade) and Ross Andru (who was the then-current penciler on Amazing Spider-Man and had drawn a few Superman stories in the late 1960s/early 1970s). Dick Giordano was the main inker, but Terry Austin and Bob Wiacek did some background inking and Neal Adams and John Romita famously re-drew a number of figures (with Romita mostly just changing faces while Adams was more dramatic with his figure alterations).

The main conceit of the story was that Clark Kent and Lois Lane attended a big news convention that Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson are also attending. Conway had gotten Mary Jane and Peter together during his run and although the next writer, Len Wein, was having them be more "on again off again," Conway stuck a bit closer to his take on their relationship (it even looks like Andru used a sweater design for Peter that he had used in a classic Peter/Mary Jane story during his run with Conway).

While at the convention, J. Jonah Jameson plans on Peter doing some work for the Daily Bugle. Peter refuses and when Jameson yells at him, Peter barks back...

It's nice to see Peter be able to still surprise MJ! Meanwhile, Clark's boss, Morgan Edge, is planning on replacing Clark as the Galaxy Broadcasting anchor for their convention coverage. When Clark lets him get away with it, Lois Lane storms off in a rage over Clark's gutlessness. She then runs into Peter Parker and Mary Jane walks in on some extremely low-level flirting, but she is still not a fan...

And then Superman swoops in and vaporizes Lois and Mary Jane!

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This, of course, enrages Spider-Man and Superman thinks that Spider-Man's sudden appearance must have something to do with Lois' attack (bit of a leap there, though, right?)...

Lex had been working on a device to lower Superman's power levels, so that is how the fight is even sort of fair for a little bit. Eventually, they team up and decide to take down Luthor, who has teamed up with Doctor Octopus.

As it turned out, the mad scientists just created a fake Superman that teleported Lois and Mary Jane and did not disintegrate them. They were now holding them hostage...

The heroes save the ladies (and stop Luthor's plan to destroy the world. Even Doc Ock helps out, as he thought the plan was just to blackmail the world over the THREAT of destroying it, not actually destroying it) and Spider-Man bizarrely admits that Mary Jane is "his girl"....

Then we get a happy ending when Jameson and Edge both admit that they screwed up and re-hire our heroes and then the guys go off on a double date with Lois and Mary Jane...

Not the most important Mary Jane appearance, but how could I pass up a chance to spotlight her throwing shade on Lois Lane and seemingly getting vaporized by the Man of Steel?

I'll try to get another "real" edition of If Her Hair Was Still Red up sooner than normal since this was sort of a special one. We're up to Amazing Spider-Man #171 if you have any thoughts you'd like to share that I might share with the others in the next column! Again, you can write me at brianc@cbr.com!