Face it, tiger: Marvel Comics hit the jackpot in 1966 when they introduced Mary Jane Watson
to the Spider-Man mythos.
Over the years, she’s evolved into a complicated and compelling character, and arguably the
greatest love of Spidey's life, and that long-lasting prominence means that she's also been featured
in almost every Spider-Man adaptation.
From Saturday morning cartoons to the big screen, here's every version of Mary Jane
Watson ranked from worst to best!
Spider-Man ‘67
Mary Jane's appearance on the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon, played by Peg Dixon, isn't really
bad.
Like everything that happened on this show, it's just sort of inexplicable.
While she has the name "Mary Jane," this version is more of a mashup of MJ and Gwen Stacy,
and is even portrayed as Captain George Stacy's niece.
Either way, it's pretty weird that one of the major characters of the entire Spider-Man
saga makes her only appearance in the 52-episode run in a story about how she gets duped into
go-go dancing at a club so that the Kingpin can brainwash city officials with a mind control
machine.
Ah, the '60s.
Spider-Man Unlimited
After Fox's popular Spider-Man animated series ended in 1998, someone had the idea to reboot
the show in a way that fans could choose to view as a continuation, but that avoided everything
the show had already done.
With that in mind, they launched a new series with the truly wild premise of Spider-Man
following Venom, Carnage, and hero astronaut John Jameson to an alternate version of Earth
populated mostly by human-animal hybrids.
Oh, and instead of just his usual spider powers, Spidey had a brand new nano-tech suit with
built-in robot weapons.
Needless to say, it only lasted one season.
By necessity, that premise meant leaving most of Spidey's established continuity behind,
so Mary Jane only appears briefly in the first episode to give Peter the helpful advice that
he should fake his death so he doesn't have to be Spider-Man anymore.
Jennifer Hale does a solid job with the few moments she has, but there’s not much there
beyond telling Spider-Man that he shouldn’t be Spider-Man anymore.
Spectacular Spider-Man
The primary function of the Mary Jane we see in the short-lived Spectacular Spider-Man
series, voiced by Vanessa Marshall, comes from the bit about Peter Parker literally
shuddering in horror every time Aunt May says she has "a wonderful personality."
It's an update of the joke that accompanied the character in her earliest comics appearances,
but here, it just lands flat.
For one thing, Peter Parker actually seems like a huge jerk.
That in itself isn't a bad thing if he learns a lesson, something that usually requires
a dead uncle.
This time, though, there's no real teachable moment.
Mary Jane’s arrival doesn’t really teach him not to judge people by their appearances;
it's more like he learns that people with "wonderful personalities" can also be hot.
Not quite as solid a moral lesson as the thing about power and responsibility.
Spider-Man: The New Animated Series
Spider-Man: The New Animated Series was a weird little experiment for a lot of reasons,
including a computer-animated style that definitely stood out in 2003, but never quite worked
for web-slinging action.
For another, the cast was stocked with celebrities in an effort to hook the teen audience that
was tuning in for MTV’s take on Spider-Man.
That’s how we got Lisa Loeb, best known for the hit single "Stay (I Missed You),"
stepping into the role of Mary Jane Watson.
She was a solid choice, bringing an entirely different sort of character than we'd ever
seen before with MJ.
Unfortunately, the janky animation just underlines that this Mary Jane that has zero chemistry
with Spider-Man, although that probably has less to do with MJ than with the cartoonish
Big Bad Wolf voice that Neil Patrick Harris puts on to disguise his version of Spidey
from Peter Parker's friends.
"Handy piece of information, that sword thing.
How'd you know?”
"Long story.
But the point is, we make a good team."
"Yes, we do."
The Spider-Man Trilogy
Kirsten Dunst’s performance as Mary Jane in Sam Raimi's cinematic Spider-Man trilogy
is a study in extremes.
She’s the primary love interest of the entire saga, although the third film flirts with
throwing Gwen Stacy into the mix.
Really, though, she’s just there as a prop to make Mary Jane seethe with jealousy.
And that's sort of the problem.
Throughout the films, Mary Jane's understandable frustrations with Peter are presented to us
as a callous misunderstanding of the burden that he has to bear as Spider-Man.
That's not entirely her fault as a character, though; Peter deciding not to tell her his
identity at the end of the first movie is an almost inexplicable choice given their
history.
To make matters even more frustrating, she's kidnapped by supervillains in all three movies,
and while that might be the default role of a superhero's love interest, it gets repetitive.
With all that said, though, the Raimi trilogy's MJ really does have a lot of great moments
too, including the upside-down kiss that stands as one of the most iconic superhero movie
moments of the 2000s.
Supaidaman
Toei's 1978 adaptation of Spider-Man as a Japanese tokusatsu show didn't exactly line
up with its source material.
Instead of a high school student being bitten by a radioactive spider, for instance, dirt-bike
racing champion Takuya Yamashiro was granted fantastic wall-crawling powers by a dying
alien, which included a 50-foot sword-wielding robot named Leopardon.
With that in mind, it shouldn't be surprising that Takuya's love interest, Hitomi Sakuma,
is pretty different from her American counterpart.
While Mary Jane was a model and actress by the '70s, Hitomi, played by Rika Miura, is
actually a little closer to Peter Parker.
She’s an intrepid photojournalist working for a character that bears more than a passing
resemblance to J. Jonah Jameson.
The only big differences are that Japan's JJJ is actually Amazoness, the field commander
of the evil Iron Cross Army.
Also, since Hitomi's actually taking pictures of Spider-Man rather than just selling off
some extremely marketable selfies, it turns out she's a better photojournalist than Peter,
too.
Spider-Man ‘94
By the time Spider-Man hit the airwaves in 1994, only two years after the debut of Batman:
The Animated Series and the X-Men cartoon, the standard had been set pretty high.
It might not hit the high points of BTAS or have the memorable theme song of X-Men — instead
going with a truly bizarre techno song about spider blood — but there's an entire generation
with some fond memories of this version of Spidey.
Much like the rest of the show, this Mary Jane was a pretty accurate translation of
the character as seen in the comics.
She was a great foil for Peter Parker, and Sara Ballantine would find her way into a
lot of Spidey readers' heads as the default voice of the character.
At the same time, she's not perfect.
If nothing else, the idea that a fashion model would be walking around in this outfit is
even less believable than a dude getting super-strength from a radioactive spider-bite.
Ultimate Spider-Man
With roles on The Powerpuff Girls, Teen Titans Go!, and plenty of other animated projects,
Tara Strong is one of the most prolific and prominent voice actresses of the 21st century.
The fact that she spent four years playing Mary Jane Watson and did a solid job of it
is hardly surprising.
Even beyond Strong's performance, Ultimate Spider-Man‘s Mary Jane is one of the most
interesting and engaging animated takes on the character.
In a lot of ways, she’s mashed up with Lois Lane: an aspiring reporter who's eager to
land a job at the Daily Bugle.
That gives her interactions with Peter (and Spider-Man) an entirely different feeling,
and shifting the day job onto MJ allowed this version of Spider-Man to be recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D.,
lead a team of teenage heroes, and have cross-dimensional team-ups with heroes from throughout the Spider-Verse.
Ultimate Spider-Man is a real hidden gem, and MJ is a huge part of what makes it work.
Spider-Man: Homecoming
If you want to get technical about it, Zendaya doesn't actually play "Mary Jane" in 2017's
Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Instead, she plays a character named Michelle, whose last name, Jones, and the fact that
she goes by "MJ" around friends were kept from moviegoers until the movie's final moments.
The reason it works is that Michelle’s personality and characterization are completely different
from what we've come to expect from Mary Jane Watson.
She has a bored, sardonic attitude replacing the smiling popularity that we'd all expect,
but that’s also what makes her the perfect MJ.
"I can't believe you guys are at this lame party."
"You're here, too."
“...am I?”
Mary Jane has always been about subverting expectations.
Her first appearance in the comic was built on the idea that Peter had been intentionally
ducking out on meeting her, and after Gwen Stacy's death, she was finally revealed to
have a personality that ran a lot deeper than how she'd been portrayed.
Most importantly, the reveal that she'd known Peter's secret identity since before she actually
met him redefined the core of her character, and it’s hinted at in the way Zendaya's
MJ looks at Peter at the end of the movie.
Homecoming's version might be called Michelle Jones, but it turns out that a Mary Jane by
any other name can be every bit as good as the others.