Spider-Girl (vol. 2) #5
Her Father’s Daughter…
Spider-Girl has lured Ana Kravinoff into a trap, turning the hunter into the hunted. Anya is spoiling for a fight because she is still processing the death of her father. She easily disarms Ana and wants to beat the shit out of her, particularly after all the pain the Kravinoff family caused Spider-Man and his allies.[1] The fight seems to go easily for Anya, but in reality, Ana Kravinoff was holding back so she can gauge Spider-Girl’s strengths and weaknesses.
Spider-Girl realizes that she is out of her depth when Ana punches her in the throat so hard it disorientates her. Realizing that she has bitten off more than she can chew, Spider-Girl decides to retreat. However, Ana forces her to come back by grabbing a man who came out onto his balcony to photograph the fight and throw him off the building. Anya swings back and saves the man, but in doing so the pair go crashing through a shop window on the street below. This allows Ana to catch up and the two continue their fight in the store. However, there are too many innocent people in the way and Spider-Girl tries to lure her foe away from others.
The news footage of the battle is caught by Kurt Godwin of the Raven Society. He is at their headquarters with her colleague Emeline Foster. Kurt tells her that he knows Spider-Girl’s secret identity, but he is deciding to keep it to himself for the time being and wants to keep it as a trump card. When Emeline asks what he is talking about, he makes up a story about how the two of them had sex in case their employers are listening in on their conversation. Once in the privacy of Godwin’s office, he tells Foster about his plans to recruit Spider-Girl as an agent of the Raven Society, having gone so far as make a new costume for the young heroine.
Meanwhile, Spider-Girl continues to goad Kravinoff to follow her by mocking her father and her family.[2] This is all a ploy to lead her to the Baxter Building where the automated defenses put Ana on the run. Impressed, Ana decides that Spider-Girl has improved and that fighting, for now, will be pointless. She then vows to come back for Spider-Girl and her family once she has done some more training. Mentioning family really sets Spider-Girl off and she lunges at Ana.
At that same moment, Rocky and Chat have gone to St. Mark’s place to buy some paintings from A-Bomb Arts, a studio run by Rocky’s friend Kevin. Kevin unveils his latest work, a painting of Rocky’s late mother and she is deeply touched by the work. They pause to watch the news footage of Spider-Girl’s fight with Ana Kravinoff. They are impressed when Spider-Girl lures Ana into traffic and uses her bolo to tie Ana to a truck that drags her across the street until she is thrown into and knocked out by a passing car. This allows the police to take Kravinoff into custody. Rocky and the others are impressed and not that the videographer who captured the fight was the Daily Bugle’s Phil Urich. They wonder how he manages to get all of his action shots, little knowing that Phil Urich is secretly the Hobgoblin and uses his equipment to film exclusives for the newspaper.[3]
Recurring Characters
Spider-Girl, Ana Kravinoff, Rocky Flint, Sophia Sanduval, Hobgoblin, Raven Society (Kurt Godwin, Emeline Foster)
Continuity Notes
She mentions how the Kravinoff’s also killed Mattie Franklin and the original Madame Web. This all happened during the Grim Hunt. See Amazing Spider-Man #634-637.
Anya mentions how Kraven the Hunter used to be dead. Kraven blew his brains out during the Kraven’s Last Hunt story arc (Web of Spider-Man #31-32, Amazing Spider-Man #293-294, Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #131-132) At the time of this story he had just recently been resurrected in Amazing Spider-Man #635.
Phil Urich usurped the Hobgoblin identity in Amazing Spider-Man #649. He’s been using a camera drone to film his exclusives for the Bugle as part of a scheme to impress reporter Norah Winters.
