Spinnerette/WMG

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Heather's Freak Lab Accident didn't really give her the Most Common Superpower.

it only looks that way because six arms require bodacious pecs.

Heather's webbing can only be disolved by her own saliva (or something equally disgusting).

In keeping with her all-too-literal spider powers.

Heather's Freak Lab Accident isn't really an "accident".

Take a close look here. The only reason the whole thing happened is because her arms somehow vanished for one panel, and popped back again in the next. Someone instigated her "accident" on purpose.

  • Latest page has Evil Spinnerette revealing she needs Heather's blood for the ritual, presumably because she's a mix of spider and human DNA right now. Note that not only did the chamber infuse spider DNA, (despite the doctor mentioning the experiments with this thing were meant to involve scorpions), the thing blew up afterwards for no apparent reason. Who's willing to bet Evil Spinnerette put this in motion to make a perfect sacrifice, then destroyed the chamber to prevent anyone trying to make a properly trained superhero with it?
    • So Dr. Lambha was correct! It was a supervillain!
    • not only is it very unlikely for a 16 year old to pull that off, a blood sacrifice has nothing to do with genetics. It's more likely she needed Heather's blood because she thought a spider person would be more appropriate.
  • ...that wasn't her arms disappearing. She lost her balance, and that third panel is a stylistic way of showing that she's flailing wildly in an attempt to grab onto something. Similar to how Sonic's legs don't actually turn into a pair of treads, he's just moving his feet really fast.
  • Whats still not explained is why the machine blew up.
  • It most likely exploded because it couldn't handle the amount of energy needed to splice the DNA. You have to remember that the thing is calibrated to spiders, which have considerably less mass, and therefore fewer cells to alter for genetic experimentation.

Mecha maid is either a boy or gay.

Maid's reaction to spinerette's costume damage speaks for itself.

    • Semi-Jossed. Mecha Maid's secret identity is a Korean woman by the name of Marilyn Seong.

Mecha Maid's alter-ego is the young lady in the power chair, seen here.

  • How do you overcome the confines of a power chair? With a powered suit, of course!
    • Apparently confirmed with the newest (11/5/10) comic. Heather seems to think so, anyway.
      • Confirmed by the next comic.

The guy who Heather tried to take down will kill/hurt someone she cares about

Just to keep with the whole Spider-Man Affectionate Parody.

  • Eh, I don't think it could keep being an Affectionate Parody if people start dying.
  • Assuming the movie was the same as the comic book, the guy killed Uncle Ben because Peter didn't try to stop him hard enough, thus making him really understand what "great responsibility" entails. Since Heather Jumped At the Call and in fact her mistake was jumping into crime-fighting too recklessly, the same happening to her wouldn't make any sense. She's already learned the lesson that guy had to teach.

Mecha Maid isn't training Heather to be a fellow super hero...

She's training Heather to be her replacement. Sort of a Tear Jerker version of Men in Black's final twist.

  • Somewhat confirmed. She claims to have become a superhero so that she could create the ideal world where the nerve amplifier she invented would be used as medicine, not as a weapon. She's entrusting Heather with the blueprints, implicitly to carry on that dream after she's gone.
  • But if the comment in the previous WMG is right, that won't happen; Heather or somebody will find a way to cure or at least arrest the progress of Marilyn's ALS. Spinneretteis firmly on the Idealistic side of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, and it just won't stay that way if key characters are Killed Off for Real. (See below for further commentary on this point.)

== Heather will fail at keeping her identity from the lab security... ==. ...and will end up getting an official lab sponsorship, with the lab providing better costume and PR and such in exchange for the rights to licensing and merchandising profits. Heather gets the aid that keeps Marvel lawyers off her back, and the lab gets a source of research income.

  • I'd have to call that one Jossed as of the December 6, 2010 comic. If the tape gets watched, well, she's got bigger problems, since her boss works for the most dangerous supervillain in Columbus, OH. The question is whether those security cameras in with the recombiner are part of the school security system, or a more personal one for the not so good doctor. If the latter, she could still be in danger.

The cop in this strip is Tiger before he got his powers.

Heather got it all wrong. Darien isn't her love interest...Marilyn Seong/Mecha Maid is!

  • Heather may be aware of her medium, but she's still hopelessly Wrong Genre Savvy at times. Thus far, Heather and Marilyn have had more scenes together, built more chemistry together, and most importantly, have a lot more subtext. From Heather being the latter's damsel in distress, to Mecha Maid's reaction to her Clothing Damage, the hand-holding, and all the pictures of them together. But most damning of all, when Darien cooked up a plan to hook himself up with Heather by inviting her to a movie, she inadvertently ruined it when she instead spent the night chatting with Marilyn, sort of "choosing" her over him, however unintentionally.
    • Sahira even straight-up thinks that Mecha Maid is in love with Heather.
      • though another take on that last one might be...

Sahira is overreacting/has it all wrong

  • Mecha Maid's not out for Spinerette as a lover. She know how little time she has, and leading a double life means not even her own parents know everything about her. She may be attracted to Spinerette, but in the end, what she wants before she dies is someone who knows everything about her. Someone who doesn't just see Mecha Maid or Marylin Seong, but Marylin Seong who is Mecha Maid. Kind of stretched, and to be honest I don't mind seeing Spin and Maid hook up, but it's just another possible thought.
  • Jossed, Mecha Maid has admitted she is indeed in love with spin, to her face.

The author reads TV Tropes

  • First, we point out how heather's costume makes her look like a six-armed Captain Ersatz of Spider-Woman (or something), and then marvel points that out too. We point out the Les Yay context in between Mecha Maid and Spinnerette, and then that becomes a subplot.
    • The author doesn't just read the website, their a troper, inflaming the WMG!
    • All but confirmed by Buzz's jacket on this page. The CMOA page strikes again!
    • Confirmed in this quote:

"By the way, the new Comicpress system is going to break any old links to this page. Suck on that, TV Tropes!"

The old man who gave Tiger his powers was killed by Doctor Universe

  • This was before Doctor Universe became a major supervillain. The fame resulting from gunning down a superhero catapulted him to the top of Ohio's (admittedly small) supervillain community.
    • Makes no sense. What purpose would that serve in the story?

Dr. Universe is going to discover Spinnerette's secret identity

By researching local supermarkets' deodorant sales.

  • Wait how would that work supermarkets sell hundreds of those things.
    • Track the credit cards. Spinnerette will be the person who's buying three times as often as anyone else. Yes, that's a whole shit-ton of data to go through, but he's a Mad Scientist Super Villain. He can figure something out.
    • He'd have to look through every store in the city and even then I don't think stores keep record of who buys what only how many items have been bought overall. On top of that what if she pays in cash?
    • Yes, actually, stores do keep records of what's been bought by a given credit card. It's all in the receipts. Any business would be stupid to not keep records of every item it sells. Generally speaking, people don't buy their groceries (which usually includes toiletries) with cash, since it's just less convenient. Yes, it's possible that Spinnerette doesn't use a credit card, but it's unlikely.
      As for the actual searching, as I said, stores store this stuff electronically, which can make searching a hell of a lot easier (remember: Mad Scientist). She named her brand, which narrows it down considerably. So you've got a general area to search and a name-brand to search. You find whoever's buying Lady Speed Stick, then find the people who're buying three times as much of it as anyone else. You might turn up the odd mother/father who has three teenage daughters, sure, but Spinnerette's real identity will be there too.
      Plus, again, remember: Mad Scientist. If anyone can pull off a ludicrously large search, it's one of them.
      • All of this, of course, assumes Heather doesn't use cash. Or buy multi-packs.
      • On top of all that how long to stores keep records for? If it's a month or less that data may not even exist. Also why is it "unlikely" for her to pay in cash when buying small things especially.
      • Deodorant is something you'd buy regularly, and most people will include such things in their regular grocery shopping--you don't go shopping just for deodorant, you pick it up during your weekly shopping trip. So it wouldn't be one small thing, but part of a much larger purchase. As for the records, I admit I don't know for sure, but a lot of stores will have a 90-day return policy, which would require longer lasting records, and I can't see any reason why you wouldn't keep records for a while. It's not good business to not keep records.
    • Actually, as Heather recently pointed out in one of her exchanges with Greta, she doesn't actually buy three times as much deodorant as everyone else (or, as she puts it, three deodorants for a dollar each); she spends three dollars for one extra-large economy size of deodorant. This won't help Dr. Universe that much, because a lot of other people do the same thing.
      • But she DID mention that she buys it once every month, instead of once every three months. Find the card that buys (amongst other things) an economy size/pack every month and Dr. Universe is golden.

The Werewolf of London Ontario's secret identity is...

... Peter Stubbs! Who decided that the safest place for a werewolf runt being chased by crazed men in biohazard suits would be in the public spotlight as a superhero. He moved to Canada to avoid awkward issues with friends and family, and helps deal with any other lycanthropes who break The Masquerade, either by helping them slip away if they're harmless or by helping his team take down the genuinely dangerous ones.

    • Plus, advancing the "Lycanthropy as curse" meme could be used to protect people who get outed as werewolves, since A) it makes werewolves seem much more rare than they actually are, and B) the general Muggle populace would be more sympathetic to "ordinary people who lose control against their will" than secret cabals of physically intimidating shapeshifters living in their midst.
    • This and anything similar are Jossed in volume 9. London says that he never transforms back into human anymore, so he probably doesn't HAVE a secret identity. Sorry!

The Renegade Werewolf is Spinnerette's Roommate Sahira.

With the recent side-view of the out of control werewolf showing it to be female, its panties being something that seems vaguely Indian in origin and the recent Sahira desktop image giving the woman Eyes of Gold one can only consider the timing involved.

  • It could also explain Sahira's interest in being able to make clothes from the spider silk Heather can make. Perhaps she got tired of Clothing Damage from changing between human and the underwear is the first thing she made using it: a test run of her sewing skills using the new material. Otherwise why would the panties survive when widening hips and a sprouting tail would have caused them to rip and fall off?
  • Jossed: It was a picture of Minerva, taken at exactly the right angle to make her three heads appear to be just one.

The woman in Tiger's photo isn't dead...

Because it seems silly that you would hate other Canadians because your dearly departed loved one was one. But rather I believe she CHEATED on him or betrayed him in some way with no justification. When he spoke about it to her friends, they sided with her instead of him. Thus, he became jaded and came to see Canadians as jerks with no real sense of justice.

  • The woman is Tiger's wife, or quite likely, ex-wife. We've seen in the werewolf episode how their marriage came to the breaking point over his superhero activities. If she did leave him for that reason, it'd be plenty of reason for him to feel bitter about Canadians in general.

Mecha Maid will not die from ALS, but anxiety about it might cause Spinnerette to hook up with her.

Comic book relationships tend to be complicated things, especially if your life is an Affectionate Parody of Spider-Man's. If it turns out Mecha Maid really is attracted to Spinnerette, knowledge that she might only have a year or two left might cause Spinnerette to go for a Relationship Upgrade, which may or may not even extend to Heather and Marilyn being together in civilian life. Of course, this being comics, some sort of science or magic will allow Mecha Maid to avoid dying, mostly since the tonal shift of one of Heather's closest friends and possible love interests dying of disease would be rather depressing for the more lighthearted tone of the comic. This could also lead to several possible plot paths for the two becoming the Official Couple, deciding they're Better as Friends, or entering a Will They or Won't They? phase. Or the Spinnerette 'verse's equivalent of Satan showing up to trick them into selling him their relationship.

    • If Alexis Woodrow's Heel Face Turn is genuine (which still very much remains to be seen as of 8/31/11, when the latest episode in her saga is just really getting under way), she might find a spell in her beloved D&D manuals that could heal Marilyn, or at least put the disease into remission.
    • Heather herself, of course, could be the one to find the method of saving Marilyn. She's a grad student in biology/biochemistry, and it's well-known that the venom of various arachnids (spiders and scorpions) has highly useful medical applications. Heather herself (as she's stated on one occasion) isn't venomous, but what about Alexis? Again, if Alexis' Heel Face Turn turns out to be the real deal AND if she's venomous, she might be willing to lend Heather some of her venom for research purposes.

Ben is Ben Franklin.

What other reason for this page if that Ben isn't Ben Franklin

  • Actually, the latest comic seems to imply that Ben Franklin is in fact exactly who you think of when you hear that name.
    • Confirmed, and he's a time traveler.

TV Tropes exists in the Spinnerette universe, and Buzz Rickards is a troper.

He has a C.M.O.A. jacket (sure, one isn't sold in real life, but it's an Alternate Universe!) and this also explains why he's so Genre Savvy.

== Sahira's new arms don't actually have anything to do with Heather's spider powers at all. == The comic already has one spider-powered protagonist. A plot involving Sahira getting spider-powers would be redundant and all-too likely to have a Reset Button pressed on it by winding up a dream or somehow being reversed back to the status quo after a while. While the characters may certainly suspect and believe (understandably so) that Heather's condition will somehow have spread at first, I believe it will eventually be subverted. Personally, I think it will turn out that Sahira somehow became possessed with (or is the incarnation of) a Hindu deity and didn't notice at first. This would give her unique powers of her own, and even possibly allow her to hide her extra arms when she needs to be discreet and appear like a regular human. (Possibly causing envy in Heather, who will need to continue to rely on the fat suit.)

  • Confirmed in the book-only Chapter 5: It turns out that Sahira's power is to copy other people's powers by touch.

People aren't trying to be insensitive by referring to Tiger as 'Black Tiger'

They merely think that 'Black Tiger' is just a cooler superhero name.

  • Alternately, it slipped up that way a few times and ended up sticking; about half the people he corrects literally say along the lines of "Wait, I heard it really was 'Black Tiger', sorry!"
  • Another theory is that he reminded everyone of Black Panther. But since he has more of a tiger theme with his costume and powers, and because Marvel is known to sue superheroes for copyright infringement, everyone just took to calling him Black Tiger.

The mecha maid we see is really a robot

For supposedly being a person in a power suit, mecha maid has far more equipment that she can pull out than could possibly fit in a suit that low-profile. Therefore it's likely she's really a lifelike android. The headband that Marilyn Song uses is simply the controller for the mecha maid android as well as the stated neural amplifier effects.

  • It would require an advanced and very human AI. More likely is that Mecha Maid is like the Major (they share the same hair and eye color, and have a similar hair style) a full-body cyborg.
    • And that implies that Marilyn has found a way (which we haven't yet witnessed) to transfer her consciousness into the cyborg Mecha Maid. If so, this may mean Tear Jerker handwringing over her impending death might be a bit premature. (It would also explain her noncommittal reply - when she makes her revelation of her fatal disease to Heather - when Heather implores her not to die; Marilyn knows that she will in fact survive in some form, but for whatever reason is not yet ready to reveal that to Heather.)
      • In fact, it's even possible that Marilyn - who we know is one of the great geniuses of the age in cybernetics - is working on a fully organic replacement for her dying body, a la Blade Runner's replicants. This raises the possibility that she could enlist Heather's (a biologist!) help in this task. (And let's not discount magic. If Alexis' Heel Face Turn turns out to be on the level, and her putative plan to reverse her Body Horror transformation by magic works, she might be willing to apply the same magic to Marilyn.
      • About that...
  • Let's just apply Occam's Razor for that. It sounds highly unlikely.
  • Jossed. She has been shown being taken out of her costume. That being said, the strength is due to nerve amplifiers, and not power armor. That would severely reduce the necessary size, since it won't need powerful motors.

The American comic versus Manga debate is an author tract

This could be just me being paranoid, but seeing how rational Heather is acting about it as opposed to Alexis, and considering how Alexis invoking Miyazaki is such a common pro anime argument, that a lot of anime haters actually use it in straw man analogies, not to mention their roles as hero and villain respectively, I find it very likely that we are supposed to agree with Heather.

  • Are we forgetting that the comic has a largely Animesque art style, even with the new artist, who's only temporary? Or how good guy Marilyn is also an anime fan and modeled her superhero alter-ego after Mahoromatic? Or that Heather has never been rational in this series, and is generally more...stupid, and bases her own arguments on Pokémon and Naruto, which is in turn a common anti-anime argument to the point that anime fans consider them strawman analogies?
    • Think this was just an ironic running gag for the chapter, especially considering the next chapter was more manga stylized than any of the earlier ones.

Dr. Universe was experimented on with his own research and is probably the most powerful person in the comic

His research was to look into what powers people like his assistant/sidekick Greta who was gifted with gravity manipulation. The Government not only confiscated his equipment and data, they arrested Greta AND the doctor. Now, assuming the government would be all 'bwahaha!' evil as some comics have them, they would likely test technology that could possibly create superheroes on the creator (they use the same source as what powers Greta, Tiger, etc). Ironic punishment, eh? It would also explain why he's still the Big Bad while his partner seems to have all the power. It could just be that Dr Universe is so powerful from the device being used on him that using his powers could possibly kill someone with the wrong flick of his fingers.

Spinnerette-universe werewolves require sex to be infected, not just a bite.

Back when he was first describing werewolves, London described lycanthropy as being similar to Ginger Snaps. While that movie doesn't actually require sex to be infected, it does have a lot of linking metaphors between sex and puberty and being a werewolf. In this page, London says he was "bitten", yet in the page previous to this one states flat-out that biting his two fangirls wouldn't turn them into werewolves. Now bringing the Ginger Snaps reference back into play, the way that London pauses before saying he was bitten--as well as the fact that the werewolf shown attacking him in his description is pretty obviously a female--leads me to believe that lycanthropy is spread via intercourse, not only biting. London probably had intercourse with that female wolf (possibly against his will from the frightened/defiant look on Teenage!London's face, who knows) and that's why simply biting those two girls wouldn't make them werewolves, and why London certainly doesn't even want to consider the possibility.

    • It's more likely that this is simply one method, given that Minerva contracts it simply by drawing blood from him thanks to a particularly hard love-bite while making out with him.

Alexis was honestly trying to turn a new leaf at first.

Sometime between her trial and the beginning of Issue 7, she realized the error of her ways, decided to drop her supervillain career, and make peace with her former archenemy, whose secret identity she was able to figure out. Unfortunately, when Heather expressed her dislike of anime, in a fit of nerd rage, Alexis decided to get back at her in the most humiliating way, and in doing so, embraced her evil ways once again.

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