Take what meds you need for your arachnophobia, because Saturday Splash Page is kicking off a Summer of Spiders!
I assume the thinking behind Spider-Woman was that people loved Spider-Man, so why not Spider-Man, but a lady? Of course, Jessica Drew's powers are very different from Peter Parker's, her origin involved her parents being scientists and HYDRA sending her to kill Nick Fury (or something, I never bothered that much with that part of her history), the most similar part of her costume is the webs under the armpits.
And that's good, that she isn't just Gender-Swapped Spider-Man. Just, feels like kind of an odd approach.
Her first ongoing series ran 50 issues, a number none of the subsequent attempts have even gotten halfway to matching. But the book doesn't have much stability, with regular changes in creative teams. From what I could tell, Marv Wolfman wrote 8 issues. Mark Gruenwald handled 9 solo, plus one he wrote with Josh Wilburn and two with Steven Grant. Michael Fleisher took over for 12 issues, J.M. DeMatteis for 1. Claremont wrote 12 issues, plus 2 others where he and Leialoha are given co-writer credits. Then Ann Nocenti handled the last 4 issues.
I own about 10 issues now, and I know the gist of the early part of the run because another blogger was doing recaps of them once upon a time. (Sadly, all that's left of his Fortress of Fortitude blog is the farewell post back in '09.)
But the arc of the book is about what you'd expect with a constant rotation of creative teams. Each writer takes their own slant, largely discarding the cast the previous writer constructed in an effort to either find something that works, or just plays better to their strengths and preferences.
Jessica starts with an old magician for a friend and a SHIELD agent as a possible love interest while she tries to learn about her past and start a life. Gruenwald sends both those guys out a year into the book and while Jessica continues to struggle to keep a civilian life going, she faces a string of second-tier (or worse) villains, several of whom Gruenwald would use in his Captain America run as part of The Shroud's "Night Shift" crew.
Fleisher pairs Jessica with a paraplegic named Scottie, who seems to act as her version of Oracle, guiding her crimefighting remotely. Except Scottie is more than a bit of a chauvinist, who gets annoyed when Spider-Woman does silly things like focus on saving endangered civilians instead of beating up the bad guy.
Claremont and Leialoha make her a private detective, because it's an easy way to meld her civilian life with the superhero side. Claremont also brings in Yakuza and ninjas, because of course he does. At least it feels like they have a strong idea for what they want the book and her status quo to be. The character's not flailing for some bit of stability any longer.
Leialoha's one of the artists with the longest tenure on the book, as he was drawing some of the Fleisher-written issues as well. It's either him or Carmine Infantino, who drew a lot of the first two years. I prefer Leialoha, he does some strong layout work for the fight scenes, whether she's up against Flying Tiger in the skies over San Francisco, or fighting an entire group of ninjas in the shadowy confines of a high-rise construction site. His version of Jessica Drew dresses for comfort, while Spider-Woman is, I can't describe it. Leialoha uses a heavy line that makes her both solid and defined, but sparingly enough she looks smooth. He really emphasizes her quickness and grace when she's gliding, and the art plays to that very well. She looks like she wouldn't encounter much wind resistance, but she'd hit like a tank once she caught you.
The book ended on issue 50, with the conclusion of some long-standing grudge between Spider-Woman and Morgan le Fay. Really seems like Jessica punching out of her weight class, tangling with a sorceress Dr. Doom would respect.
4 comments:
My understanding is that they rushed Spider-Woman into publication to secure the trademark, before someone else (DC) did.
I'm sure I remember reading that her weird origin was another last-minute thing, and was intended (and rejected) for Wolverine before being reworked for Spider-Woman.
Ah, that would make sense. I never remember there's stuff like trademark issues factoring into these decisions.
I could see the notion of it being Wolverine's origin. Wasn't there something that he was going to turn out to be literally a mutated wolverine?
Yep, an actual wolverine ascended into a human by the High Evolutionary.
A Wolverine for the furry enthusiasts, delightful.
And Marvel did eventually have whatever the hell Jeph Loeb was doing with that storyline about ancient bloodlines of vaguely cat or doglike people (even though a wolverine is neither), and Romulus.
Logan might have been better off with the High Evolutionary.
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