Random Back Issues #163 - Spider-Woman #19

If that's her skin, shouldn't she have a sucking chest wound? Shapeshifting is so inconsistent. The last time we looked at this series, Spider-Woman was fighting a scientist who made a bunch of crazy clones of grandmother. That might be preferable to today's issue, which is a Devil's Reign tie-in.

The Kingpin, now Mayor of NYC, is cracking down on vigilantes. He already had his Thunderbolts beat up Jessica's friend Lindsay McCabe, but as it turns out, the Skrull Queen from Secret Invasion somehow survived getting her head kersploded by Norman Osborn, and has been in custody all this time. And Fisk thought it was a good idea to let her out, just to mess with Spider-Woman? He definitely fits into the current era of abusing political power to settle personal spats.

Veranke's imitating Spider-Woman and picks up her son, Gerry, from the Night Nurse, who gets suspicious about Gerry being so unhappy a little too late. Spider-Woman also shows up a little too late, as the armored van rolls away, leaving her to punch it out with Veranke. The comedy sound effects stop partway through, so Jessica takes that as the cue to chase the van (fortunately caught in traffic, the goon complaining about being, 'baby chauffeur'), but when she arrives, Gerry's not in the back. But Iron Man showed up to help!

I'm sure there's a time that would be cause for excitement, but not today, especially as it's Veranke. Fighting resumes, the Skrull taunting Jessica about how none of her friends trust her, while Jessica is more concerned Veranke made out with Tony back during that mess. (Pacheco also keeps trying to do the editor's notes for these things, but doesn't remember the specific issue, forcing assistant editor Lindsey Conick to add another editor's note.)

Then the van goes hurtling off a bridge! Gerry's not in the back of the van because he somehow crawled into the cab and zapped the guard, who's unconscious body slumped on the accelerator. So now they're fighting on a garbage scow. Spider-Man swings past, saying Night Nurse got in touch with him, and Jessica zaps him. In her defense, Veranke said the same thing when pretending to be Iron Man. Also, judging by the costume, that's Ben Reilly during that stretch where he was the Beyond Corporation's Spider-Man?

Then Carol Danvers shows up, holding Gerry. Or wait, did Carol just arrive behind Jessica? Unable to be sure, Jessica tells Gerry to, 'zap-zap bad Auntie Carol,' which is the latecomer. Carol flies away with Gerry, and, ding-ding, it's Round 3.

Veranke starts a spiel about honoring Jessica by believing her strong enough to be a leader, and that's why Veranke impersonated her. Why the fuck did she think that? When had Jessica Drew ever been a leader, of anything? Because she "ran" a two-person detective agency? She had even led the Champions, or the freaking Defenders, let alone anything serious.

I know the reason she'd think that, Bendis liked Spider-Woman, but that doesn't work as a Watsonian excuse. "I did you a favor!" failing to gain traction, Veranke shifts to Clint Barton (as Ronin), accusing Jessica of making him watch his wife die. Does she mean the Skrull that got killed by Mephisto in West Coast Avengers, or the one that died in the Savage Land during Secret Invasion? 

Either way, Jessica can punch Clint just fine - told him he shouldn't have cheated on her in Fraction and Aja's Hawkeye! - so Veranke tries Gerry, but doesn't even get as far as changing her skin color before getting flipped on top of a flat-screen TV. Finally she tries a battered Lindsay, again not bothering to stop being green as she blames Lindsay's injuries on Jessica, and Spider-Woman just zaps her skull. With piss-poor strategy like that, I'm starting to think the Skrulls backed a stupid horse.

Carol returns with Gerry, Jessica hugs her kid and asks if they can just leave Veranke in a fridge on the garbage scow, which Danvers agrees to. Also, Jessica calls Carol "Kirk," and Carol calls her "Spock," which is just nonsense. Jessica Drew is waaaaaay too angry in this run to be Spock. She's McCoy all the way.

These are the only Devil's Reign stuff I own, as Moon Knight had the decency to tie-in via a one-shot outside the monthly series. Of course, this book is getting canceled in 2 issues, so they had nothing to lose. 

{10th longbox, 160th comic. Spider-Woman (vol. 7) #19, by Karla Pacheco (writer), Pere Perez (artist), Frank D'Armata (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer)}

Saturday Splash Page #137

 

"Gastrointestinal Distress Signals," in Spider-Woman (vol. 7) #1, by Karla Pacheco (writer), Pere Perez (artist), Frank D'Armata (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer)

In the first year of volume 7, Perez usually draws the first page as a series of images of Spider-Woman against an entirely black backdrop. Like we were catching glimpses when a flashbulb went off. The second year, he shifted to a splash page that usually summarized what was happening, with a sound effect or some other large lettering forming part of the background. It's not quite Adam West Batman sound effects, but there's a bit of that feel, given the lighter tone of many of the stories.

But Spider-Woman's symbol formed out of acidic vomit is a hard image to top, so here we are.

Karla Pacheco's run started in 2020 with Jessica Drew feeling like crap and making little effort to hide it. She's wearing a new, mostly black costume - which Jessica comments makes her butt look amazing, but I fail to see a difference in how Perez draws it; must be some "black is slimming" thing - because she needs money and doesn't want to wear her traditional costume for playing bodyguard to some rich guy's daughter. The jacket and goggles of the Hopeless/Rodriguez runs vanish into the aether, though the motorcycle is around some of the time.

As it turns out, the rich guy, Michael Marchand, is Jessica's brother. Her parents had another kid after escaping HYDRA, but when he used their experiments on infusing arachnid traits to save his daughter from cancer, he forgot about keeping her from dying of the radiation. So after dosing Jessica with a serum that removes the regenerative abilities that protect her from the radiation, convinces her to help search for a cure because this same problem could manifest in her son, Gerry.

This is as much as Gerry, or Porcupine for that matter, factor into Pacheco's run. She literally sends them to a farm upstate for the first year, then has Jess dispense with any of the trust she put in Roger to help her fight in year two, so that he leaves right when he was about to propose. Fine, you don't want to deal with the status quo Hopeless left you (except to use the baby as a lever to make the main character do what your plot requires.) I get that. But once Roger's out of the book, Jessica constantly foists care of her child onto other characters, who nonetheless all reassure Spider-Woman she's not a terrible parent. 

Sure, compared to Magneto or Wolverine, she's awesome.

While the experimental drug Marchand's developed (but is unwilling to test on his daughter) boosts Drew's powers and restores the pheromone power (albeit to Bendis' version, where dudes fall for her, rather than the original version, where people instinctively don't like her), it also makes her increasingly angry and erratic. Jessica steadily alienates her friends by screaming at them, stealing their stuff, injuring them when they get in her way. She steals from Stark on behalf of her parents' old HYDRA colleague and attacks War Machine when he catches her. When Carol Danvers enlists her to help fight symbiote dragons in the obligatory King in Black tie-ins, because Danvers has to save her juice for the Final Boss (which ended up losing to an Enigma Force-using Eddie Brock anyway, and that might be the stupidest horseshit I've typed on this blog, thanks Donny Cates!), Jessica gets angry enough to break Danvers' arm.

Pacheco writing Spider-Woman as really angry all the time doesn't bug me. Hopeless wrote her with a temper - she wailed on an entire bar full of villains when she thought Roger was dead. So did Claremont if someone she cared about was hurt. And Danvers knew that Drew using her powers would kill her faster, and made her do it anyway, for one dragon. That's fine. I just have never cared about the strange muddle of HYDRA and the High Evolutionary that makes up Jessica Drew's origin. So the first year revolving heavily around that - Octavia Vermis being an old colleague of both Jess' parents and the H.E., there being homicidal clones of Jessica's mother in late-stage Clone Saga-level quantities, Marchand being her brother with ulterior motives - I ain't got time for that. Especially the High Evolutionary. If John Ostrander couldn't make me give a shit about that dude in Heroes for Hire, Pacheco had a less than zero chance. All his dialogue might as well be how the adults talk in Peanuts.

The storyline concludes with Jessica back to normal. Her friends forgive her for her behavior. She shelves the new costume, which was transmitting data to Vermis the whole time and goes back to the classic look for year 2. Which is much more about Jessica Drew fighting random enemies. Marchand does pop up again, having given himself powers at the urging of his new girlfriend, but otherwise it's enemies like Lady Bullseye or two brothers who share a pair of enchanted swords and claim to be from Toledo, so Jess can make a bunch of terrible jokes about the city in Ohio.

That becomes her "thing" in the second half of the book, making bad puns and jokes. OK, sure. As long as the High Evolutionary isn't involved. Pacheco brings back Claremont/Leialoha supporting cast member Lindsay McCabe, who I don't think had been used since the (I think) Spider-Man annual story in the '90s where she enlisted Julia Carpenter to retrieve Drew's soul from the limbo where it resided.

The stories are a bit more lighthearted. Even if Rebecca Marchand has to help Jessica fight her dad, she does so in her own super-suit and with the aid of a dinosaur that I think they and Vermis either created or bred with the High Evolutionary's work. She rides it like a big, jagged-tooth pony! No feathers, though. Comic artists still hewing to the scaly hide conception of dinos. McCabe's doing stunt work in a Western and gets attacked by ninjas because she's hasn't paid off a debt to some Madripoor gangster. Bit lower stakes, more chances for bad jokes by Drew.

Drew gets some upgrades to the classic costume, so now the web gliders under the arms can detach and be used like those fighting fans in kung-fu movies. Perez and Pacheco seem to have fun with the fight scenes, having Spider-Woman use a variety of styles, although characters really seem to like arm locks. Lots of people gets arms broken or dislocated, it felt like. They take advantage of the settings, bring in surprise or random interference when it's appropriate.

I don't like that Perez seems to de-age Night Nurse. I liked how Marcos Martin drew her in Dr. Strange: The Oath, where she was probably late '30s. The outfit was loose enough she could move, but not to where it might impede movement or get caught on instruments. Now she's wearing a form-fitting nurse outfit all the time.

The last story is a two-parter where a bunch of the villains from the run try to form essentially a "League of Spider-Woman Haters" to get revenge, but they're chumps, so it mostly ends in hilarious disaster. Vermis can't get Stegron the Dinosaur Man to stop flirting with her, the Brothers Grimm are arguing with the swordfighter brothers about stealing their bit. Of the two halves, I definitely prefer the second part, even with the Devil's Reign tie-in where we find out the Skrull Queen from Secret Invasion somehow survived Norman Osborn exploding her head. Yeah, I don't know.

Random Back Issues #123 - Spider-Woman #10

Who hasn't wanted to toss a crying baby into a vat of molten lava? Be honest!

Up to this point, Spider-Woman's been working with an old enemy, Octavia Vermis (???), to find a cure for an experimental serum she was dosed with. The serum boosted her strength, but made her unstable, to the extent she chewed out and pushed away all her friends. Which leaves her to contend with Octavia's sudden but inevitable betrayal, alone.

Octavia's already run the High Evolutionary (written as more sane and down-to-earth than I've ever seen) through with a lance and killed her daughter. Again. But Ophelia's a clone, so she'll just make another. Jess was cured in the previous issue, which means she's not under Octavia's control, but she's too shitty of an actress to fake it and keep the element of surprise.

Cue the fight scene, with each of them trying to hurt emotionally as well as physically. Jess' contention she has people who love her is countered with the fact absolutely none of them are here right now. Octavia's argument she made something of her kids is rebutted with the point they might have sucked because they're clones of a shitty person.

That one's a palpable hit, but it earned Jess a kick in the old joybox, so. . . Palpable hits all around. Then Octavia suggests Jess would do the same to her own son, make him a perfect obedient copy. Jess responds by getting Octavia in the face with a venom blast, so Octavia sics an army of clones of Jess' mother on her.

Jess kicks a control device into the lava and the clones, programmed to retrieve it, follow. She gets the lance out of H.E.'s chest, he activates his array, Jess kicks Octavia into it, and she's turned into a possibly mindless dino-person. The Evolutionary keeps Octavia around while he rebuilds his lab, and Spider-Woman goes home.

First to her son, because he's her kid, but also because she's going to use him as a shield when she apologizes to her unhappy friends - Hawkeye, Iron Fist, Night Nurse, Luke Cage and War Machine. It works, because none of them are prepared to go through that terrifying facsimile of a child, but there's still one more person to make up with, and Carol's not in the mood. She accuses Jess of always denying her problems or running away from them. I feel like Carol Danvers does at least as much denying or running from her problems as Jessica Drew - the whole alcoholism thing, anyone? - but that doesn't jibe with Marvel's current conception of her character, where her only fault is she's just too awesome and people resent her for it, so whatever. They hug it out.

{10th longbox, 176th comic. Spider-Woman (vol. 7) #10, by Karla Pacheco (writer), Pere Perez (artist), Frank D'Armata (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer)}