The Marvelous Mary Jane: The Blind Date

Ever wonder how Peter and Mary Jane met for the first time? Would you believe a Blind Date?

Mary Jane Watson was the niece to Anna Watson who happened to be the next door neighbor to May Parker. For years the two women schemed up a way to get Mary Jane to go on a blind date with May’s nephew, Peter Parker. In the core Amazing Spider-Man book, Peter did everything to avoid meeting “that nice Watson girl next door.”, since he figured that she was not his type and his elderly aunt liked her. We all didn’t have an idea on what Mary Jane looked like until Amazing Spider-Man #25 when a panel was of shown her sitting on the couch with a house plant hiding her face. Betty Brant and Liz Allen where actually the first supporting characters to meet her and where in complete shock on how attractive she was.

When Amazing Spider-Man #42 printed we saw the same shock on Peter’s face when he actually met her for the first time when he answered the door.

The story continued in Amazing Spider-Man #43 where Peter just couldn’t get over how attractive and fun Mary Jane was and how stupid he was for avoiding a girl like that. These two hit it off from the start and Mary Jane even tagged along with Peter on assignment when he had “to get pictures” of the Rhino.  Peter actually thought of her as a perfect cover when going out on his Spidey-duties.  Where Peter’s romantic interests thought he was foolish for him to risk his life to get pictures of Spider-Man, Mary Jane embraced the excitement of it all.  She thought it was “Groovy.”

In Gerry Conway’s Parallel Lives Story, Mary Jane had found out that Peter was Spider-Man after she witnessed him climbing out the window the night his Uncle Ben was shot and just like Peter, she was trying to void meeting him as well.

The two, in that series, eventually met.

See ya NEXT MONTH!

Stan Lee: “No matter how we wrote Gwen, Mary Jane always seemed more interesting! She had more personality where Gwen was just a nice girl.”