Featuring the following heroine!

Betty Brant

AKA: Betty Leeds

First appearance: Amazing Spiderman 4

Favorite quote: "You ?! AAIIEE!!" (Amazing Spider-Man 288)

Team affiliation: Betty works for the Daily Bugle, originally as J. Jonah Jameson's secretary 
and currently as an investigative reporter. During tougher emotional times she belonged to 
the Cult of Love (Web of Spiderman 40-43). She was the first love of Peter Parker, the Amazing 
Spiderman. After marrying Ned Leeds in ASM 156, Betty almost left her husband for Peter in 
ASM 195, and did throw Ned over for Flash Thompson circa ASM 275. Ned's murder in Spiderman versus Wolverine 1 almost sent her off the deep end, a process undoubtedly begun when she beheld the true face of the Hobgoblin in ASM 288.

Powers: Obviously the ability to turn men's heads while retaining a squeaky-clean reputation! :-)

Favorite Storyline: Betty spent so much time as the threatened, passive female, it's hard to believe she could ever develop a backbone. But this is the nineties. In Web of Spiderman 63 Betty defeated Mister Fear, and confronted the fear of loneliness that fed her collection of men. After she faced her husband's specter and accepted the truth about him (a truth, incidentally, some people at Marvel still have trouble handling) in Spectacular Spiderman 148, Betty finally achieved self-reliance in Web of Spiderman 91, much to the amazement of Spiderman himself : "Since when did Betty carry a gun and know martial arts?!" While all this personal growth is a wonderful thing, I worry about the arsenal she now stores in her bedroom closet...

Least favorite storyline: Spectacular Spiderman 107-110. Not only did this contain the completely gratuitous death of Captain Jean DeWolff, but the last panel in SS 109 so angered me I didn't pick up another Spiderman issue for years, and so didn't know for a very long time that Betty's encounter with the Sin Eater was not as fatal as it appeared.

Editor's note: Did I mention the Hobgoblin? He's kinda important in all this. And you might as well know the original story: how it started, how it ended, and all the cool, cool, cool, cool, really cool stuff that happened in between. With the release of Spiderman: Hobgoblin Lives, all that history looks very different these days! (Sigh. All I want are nice, original stories without everyone going back and re-doing the past the way they think it should've been done in the first place--is that so much to ask?)
Betty with Uzi