WMG / Spinnerette

Spinnerette's Lair

Is going to be called "The Parlor".

• Good or Evil Spinny?

Possible Future Stories (Written December, 2017)

The writers are tropers, we know this. Let's try and predict what they'll come up with next! (Or maybe give them ideas!)

• Gretta Heel–Face Turn.
  • To take this further, she could at first be pretending as part of Doctor Universe's plan. Then she decides she genuinely enjoys being a hero, and so abandons him.
  • Further still, that could be part of his plan, making her The Mole.
  • And again, she could just be pretending about that, and is actually helping her new friends in the Chicago Superheroes.

• A Civil War storyline. The setup is there; Tiger and Mecha Maid have very different ways of doing things, as do Ben Franklin and Super MILF. There are undoubtedly other heroes throughout the country. And Spinny, as a Spider-Man parody, is the perfectly middle ground for everyone to fight over.

• Alien Invasion! Because why not.

• Have Evil Spinnerette go all Doctor Doom on us.
  1. She stays away, spending all her time learning magic.
  2. At some point in the future, she learns a time travel spell.
  3. She travels back in time to the original discovery of magic and learns all she can there, including how to become immortal.
     • She could even become the goddess who originally turned her into a drider!
  4. She then hides away in a cave and waits until modern times.
  5. Once she senses enough time has passed, she returns to Chicago to destroy Spinnerette once and for all!
  • Some ideas about how that could go down:
    • ES could raise an army of driders
    • ES could use time magic to enable her to kill Ben Franklin
    • Going off the above, Spinnerette decides to recruit the younger ES against goddess ES, and young ES could choose to become a hero, creating a time paradox that restores her legs and brings Ben Franklin back to life (but sticks him back in the 18th century), and also leaves goddess ES alive in the present, though with a lot less power.

• Buzz becomes an anti-hero who uses guns to fight the villains, like The Punisher.
• The superheroes get a man in the chair.
• A Secret Warriors storyline, maybe Minerva training some demons from the underworld who want to become superheroes.

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 dissolved 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.

• Evil Spinnerette reveals 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? Dr. Lambha was correct! It was a supervillain! What's still not explained is why the machine blew up.
• Her arms "vanishing" is visual short-hand for her flailing around so quickly as to induce motion-blur, trying to regain her balance. Still a good guess though, as we truly do not know the limits of Alex's magic powers.

Mecha maid is either a boy or gay.

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

• The boy part is jossed. Mecha Maid's secret identity is a Korean woman by the name of Marilyn Seong.
• The gay part is confirmed in the cliffhanger ending. MM outright said she loves Spinny.

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 and then 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.

• 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. Instead, it will be a lesson about reckless.

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

She's training Heather to be her replacement; 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. This 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 other WMG for further commentary on this point.)

Heather will fail at keeping her identity from the lab security

.It will end up getting an official lab sponsorship, with the lab providing a 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.

• Jossed as of the December 6, 2010 comic. If the tape gets watched, 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.

• Confirmed.

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

• 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 the case is clear, 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 straight-up thinks that Mecha Maid is in love with Heather.
• Confirmed. Marilyn and Heather are dating.

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.
• Jossed, Mecha Maid has admitted she is indeed in love with spin, to her face.

Sahira is helping Mecha Maid hook up with Heather

After seeing all those photos of them together (and especially the one where Mecha Maid checks out Spinnerette's ass) Sahira put two and two together and became a Shipper on Deck. However, knowing how dense her roommate can be, she decided to aid Mecha Maid in what was bound to be a difficult task. This is why she points out the obvious and tells her about those "lesbian stereotypes". Driving a Subaru or drinking from a Nalgene bottle? She made that stuff up and told Mecha Maid to enact them after she told Heather about them. It was a subtle way of telling Heather that she's a lesbian and nudging her into thinking about their relationship in a different light.

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, they're 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 question now isn't if Krow is a Troper but if he will succeed in addressing every WMG on this page.

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. It was not on purpose but he used it nevertheless.

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

By researching local supermarkets' deodorant sales. He'll track the credit cards and 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. ^note  It's all in the receipts. Any business would be stupid to not keep records of every item it sells. Yes, it's possible that Spinnerette doesn't use a credit card, but it's unlikely.
As for the actual searching, 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. This story arc will end with Heather using cash only for such purchases.

• Jossed. Dr. Universe has known for a long time who she is. She's Spinnerette. That's all that matters.

The Werewolf of London Ontario's secret identity is Peter Stubbs

Yes THAT Peter Stubbs! He 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 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 Supernatural Gold Eyes 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. Instead, 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 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.
• If the cure to ALS is ever found, in universe, "Adastraea" will be denied getting it. Why? She killed the researcher who came up with it. Dr. Singh What bigger rejection can there be than that. She'll get to enjoy her Als in her prison/hospital bed for the rest of her short, sorry life.
  • The author could potentially cure it with the genetic infusion chamber. ALS slowly breaks down the connection in the nervous system. If the genetic infusion chamber gave Marilyn a Healing Factor she could regenerate her nervous system as it's broken down.

Ben is Ben Franklin.

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

• 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.

• Buzz Rickards may or may not be a troper, but Colonel Glass sure is confirmed to be. He even lampshades the fact that he exploits the Faceless Goons trope by saying to his enemy that he "should read the TV Tropes entry for Faceless Goons".

Sahira's new arms don't 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, this will not be the case. Instead, 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.
• 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!"
• He reminds 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 old man who gave Tiger his powers used "Black Tiger" as his superhero name, and everyone just assumes the new Tiger is using the same name (or thinks they are the same person).

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. 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.)
  • 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. (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.
• Jossed. She has been shown being taken out of her costume. 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. Far more likely is that Mecha Maid might figure out a way to do this, but hasn't succeeded in doing so, yet.

The American comic versus Manga debate is an author tract

Seeing how rational Heather acts 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, it is very likely that we are supposed to agree with Heather.

• Arrayed against this argument is that the comic has a largely Animesque art style, how good guy Marilyn is also an anime fan and modeled her superhero alter-ego after Mahoromatic, how 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. More likely, it 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 Mad Scientist 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.

Spinnyverse 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 one 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.

• 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 manga, 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.

Cherenkov-Kirby Generator is actually Human Resources that are Powered by a Forsaken Child

Calling it now rather than later, but the size constraints fit, there is a fact that it's what makes humans super, and Dr.Universe claims Tiger has no idea what CKG really is.

• Now that Dr. Universe made The Reveal, it's half right. Every CKG comes from pineal gland of one Dr. Zhang, aka Ultra, who according to Universe was murdered by the government to get raw materials.

Ultra was the Third Entity

We know little about Ultra except for fact that he was the first superhero and was secretly murdered because parts of his body give superpowers. Supposedly Cherenkov-Kirby Generators are from his "pineal gland", but, given there are a number of them in the world and the pineal gland is quite small, it is more likely that that is the explanation given to disguise the fact that they are really body part of a giant space creature.

• This would explain how there are some places that the CKR powers are more or less powerful: more powerful on dimensional weak points, where the Shard connection is stronger, and less powerful on dimensionally stable points, where there's more "interference" between the Third Entity's private dimension and the Spinnyverse.
• The above also explains how characters can have the CKR go critical: their Shard is getting too much energy channeled into it, and might become overwhelmed.
• This explain how the infusion machine which contained a Cherenkov-Kirby Reactor was able to give Spinnerette her powers: it is essentially a machine that artificially gives out Shards like the Entities do.

Mecha Maid thinks Spinnerette is ashamed to be with her.

During the training camp in Canada, Katt interrupted the two sharing an intimate moment and Spinny panicked and scooted away, and in the next panel Mecha Maid can be seen tearing up although she doesn't say anything. With Alberta's rage toxins in the base, she'll end up confronting Spinnerette about it.

• Confirmed. They made up afterwards.

The Glass loose in Columbus is Mecha Maid’s half-brother

The guy looks just too young to be the Colonel Glass from 1985. With the Super Breeding Program, Colonel Glass just tried it twice, with Marilyn and Glass Jr. Maybe he noted early that Marilyn wasn’t going to be crazy enough for his taste. Or he is just a misogynist on top of all the other craziness and wanted a son.

• Most fast healers in comics age slowly.

Colonel Glass knows everything about the plot so far

He reads TV Tropes. He could read the very page about this webcomic. He can follow the links to the comic itself and catch up on the story. He knows where Heather, Marilyn, and Tiger are, he knows what they're capable of, what plans they have, and can prepare for them accordingly. In fact, he came to Columbus precisely for this reason; by reading Spinnerette regularly, he knows he'll always be one step ahead of the heroes.

Delta is a Reality Warper

Isn't it obvious? He's an Otaku who put the supers into one of his Harem Genre fantasies.

• Sort of confirmed. Delta is a Dream Weaver - he can be a Reality Warper inside of his dreams, but probably not in reality.

Delta has a Stand

Delta's Stand either takes the form of his Uniform or it lives inside it's user. Know the problem is what would be it's name...

Spinnerette is about to meet an Alternate Universe version of herself.

In this comic she's about to apply to an "antiproton collider" project. We're all Genre Savvy enough to know that messing with anti-matter in a superhero setting can't end well. Seeing how the cover shows both Spinny a redheaded girl with six arms and a very similar costume, said collider will probably open access to an Alternate Universe from which will come the redheaded Spinnerette.

• Yep.

Delta will help the heroes to defeat Catfish

Dreams are their speciality, after all.

• Oh no. Never mind.