Spider-Girl, the alternate-future daughter of Peter "Spider-Man" Parker and his wife, Mary Jane, had a thrilling ride in her self-titled book. Threatened with cancellation several times, the series was always saved by its fans and was reprinted as a popular series of digest collections.

But the series did, eventually, get cancelled. Fortunately for those fans, however, Spider-Girl soon returned with a new title, The Amazing Spider-Girl, which riffs on the flagship Spider-Man series.

The book begins with May Parker striding blissfully through her high school. She has retired as Spider-Girl, at the behest of her worried parents, and is enjoying the "normal" life of a New York City teenager. Of course, anyone who knows anything about Spider-Man knows Peter Parker tried the same thing a time or two, and circumstances -- along with his overriding sense of guilt -- always brought him back to the superhero thing. The same is true of May, who cannot stand by when she sees a murder in progress in a city alleyway and, later, learns of an attack at a women's shelter where she volunteers.

The story runs a gamut of events, from a student council election campaign to supervillains Black Tarantula and Hobgoblin. May, like Peter before her, conceals her extracurricular activities from her family and, naturally, feels a tremendous amount of guilt for doing so. All in all, it's a lot of fun, particularly for Spider-Man fans who wish Peter had never grown up (who also have Ultimate Spider-Man to enjoy) and for young, female readers who wish more heroes were like them.