Product Description: Before she was an Avenger, she was... a Hydra agent?! Witness the Arachnidian Adventuress's dire debut against Nick Fury, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. - and a follow-up arc alongside the ever-lovin', blue-eyed Thing! After working a few bugs out of her origin, she set up shop in California and faced an array of eccentric enemies rarely equaled to this day! Includes the introduction of several characters by the late great Mark Gruenwald! Featuring Shang-Chi, the Werewolf by Night, the Shroud, and more! Collects Marvel Spotlight #32, Marvel Two-In-One #29-33 and Spider-Woman #1-25.
Very interesting... Spider-Woman was a different and daring book for the time it was originally published (late 70s). If you're looking for a female version of Spider-Man, look somewhere else. This book is edgy and shows a character who's not comfortable with her super-powers and really isn't that powerful overall. Jessica Drew has a unique problem; her spider-blood makes others not like her. This plays out for awhile before Michael Fleisher takes over as writer and takes her in a new direction. There aren't a lot of big-time villains outside of Hydra in the beginning parts, but it's an eclectic group for an eclectic heroine. If you're looking for a different look at heroes, here's a good read.
Graphic SF Reader Some good, solid superhero tale, with a solid female lead trying to make her way in the world after an terrorist and espionage ridden upbringing. Given the time it is not quite Sex and the City, and she does have a kindly avuncular figure around, who happens to be a magician, and of course her landlady is not what she seems.
Great introduction to Spider Woman...but.... Although the stories are intriguing and seem complete from the beginning, from the introduction of the Spider Woman character in MARVEL SPOTLIGHT #32 and her guest starring appearances with the Fantastic Four's "Thing" in MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE #29-33, I gave THE ESSENTIAL SPIDER WOMAN VOL. 1 only three stars because it's all black and white.
Only the front and back covers are in color. Everthing in-between is black and white, no grey scale, so the pages of this graphic novel look more like pages from a coloring book rather than a comic. Not too big a deal for most people, but I found it hard to figure out what was going on in some of the busier panels i.e. fight scenes.
Also, the pages are made of the flimsy newspaper stock, which I know was the way comic books came out back in the day and sometimes still do, but for a volume meant for fans and collectors of Spider Woman, Marvel could have used higher quality paper. At least give us the colored pages! Maybe Marvel didn't use color in the original series, which I find hard to believe--but being a D.C. kid--I wouldn't know, so that would explain the black and white used in this volume.
But what can you expect for the price and the 500+ pages you get. So I'm just nit-picking.
SPIDER WOMAN #1-25 is also included in the volume, so all is not lost.
The dynamic drawings by Carmine Infantino and others are really great, neither being too hyper-real or cartoonish/anime like comic books today, and the story lines are riveting. The covers of each issue separate the stories so they don't run together, which is a nice touch.
Anyway, aside from the color thing, ESSENTIAL SPIDER WOMAN VOL.1 is worth purchasing.
BTW, Spider Woman is a playable character in the MARVEL ULTIMATE ALLIANCE game for Playstation 2 and other game systems. But I'm sure hardcore fans already know this.
Spider-Woman Redux After years of hiatus, Spider-Woman has returned to her roots with "New Avengers". Essentially playing a support role now, it's fun to look back and remember when Jessica Drew aka Spider-Woman was the star of her own on-going comic book series. Having no relation to the more famous Spiderman, Spider-Woman let loose on the world of Marvel in the late 1970's. The stories collection in the this volume cover the origin and first few battles of Marvel's reinvented heroine.
It's important to remember that like classic films, these stories were written for a different time. The dialouge, set ups, and resolutions can sometimes be silly. The artwork is top notch and lends itself well to the black and white pages of Marvel's Essential collections. The price point of the book is affordable enough for even a casual fan to pick up a copy and revisit it every now and then.
Hopefully Marvel will see fit to release a second edition containing the last half of "Spider-Woman"...until then...MAKE MINE MARVEL!
Essential fans are treated to a kiss of the Spider-Woman I'm relatively new to the world of Marvel Comics fandom, so new in fact that the first time I had ever heard of Jessica "Spider-Woman" Drew was only a couple of years ago while I was looking through the Marvel Encyclopedia 4: Spider-Man. At first glance, my thoughts about her were entirely cynical. After all, Spidey is so popular that obviously they'd try to spin a new character from the same idea but just as a different gender; clearly this backfired since I hadn't heard from this lady since. Now with her resurgence in New Avengers, a limited-edition origin series currently on shelves, and especially a new Essential volume, Johnny-Come-Latelys like me can get a more accurate perspective of the Arachnidian Adventuress. I was very pleased to pick up the Essential Spider-Woman both to learn more about the history of the character and because a volume on a solo heroine was really past due. My time with Ms. Drew was very enlightening, but was it enjoyable? Read on, true believer.
The saga of Spider-Woman begins with espionage across Europe and concludes on the mean streets of Los Angeles. Ms. Drew is introduced as an unwilling ally of Hydra (her duel with Nick Fury was quite a treat since we don't see too much of him in the Essentials) but then the ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing helped her regain her bearings during an extended stay in Marvel Two-in-One. By the way, the blurb on the back cover is quite correct in saying that she first "worked a few bugs out of her origin". Archie Goodwin, the author of her first appearance in Marvel Spotlight, claimed that the High Evolutionary created her from an actual spider; Marv Wolfman however retconned that little germ of an idea and gave her a true human heritage (Because, really, a common wolf spider transformed into a statuesque brunette? Even comic book science should have its limits). Anyway, Jessica later scores her own series and tries to rejoin society, and her first major conflict is not with some costumed villain but with the unemployment office (spending all that time looking for a job seemed a little too Spider-Man-ish, if you ask me). Fortunately, she is helped along by hunky SHIELD agent Jerry Hunt and ancient wizard Magnus, and then she relocates to LA, home to Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk (it was the place to be if you were a super-heroine). While trying to connect the threads of her lost history, she runs afoul with Nekra, the Mistress of Hate; the wife and "sons" of a very obscure Iron Man foe; the hooded gangster known as the Gamesman (I think we're starting to run out of good names for criminal masterminds at this point); and even King Arthur's sorceress half-sister Morgan Le Fey (not the DC Morgan with the black hair and mask, the Marvel one with the purple hair and the neckline that plunges to her navel). By the time the last page is turned, Jess will have made three more friends in the laid-back actress Lindsay McCabe, tightly-wound criminologist Scott McDowell, and mysterious do-gooder Shroud (who has Batman's back-story, Daredevil's powers, and Cloak's fashion sense), she will have met Spider-Man (as if you couldn't have guessed that would happen), and what a long, strange trip it will have been.
It was long and strange, but also uneven and ultimately a bit disappointing. I think the biggest problem with this collected volume is that once Mark Gruenwald took over as writer he seemed to pull Ms. Drew in a new direction each month. Heck, she went from an independent women's libber to a lowly secretary to a pill-popping neurotic to a go-go dancing party girl to a hard-nosed bounty hunter, all in about ten issues. She also has no shortage of lame flash-in-the-pan baddies like the Needle (He has one eye. Get it!) and the Killer Clown (I think DC kind of has a lock on psychopathic killers with white faces). Issue #8 was this odd double-feature of mediocre Twilight Zone tales about some guy who has lived for three-hundred years because he can't love and a salesman who becomes possessed by a slain mobster's gaudy and hideous suit. Maybe that could have worked over at Howard the Duck, but not here. Lastly, at the end of one issue, Spider-Woman is hogtied and carted away by the insane sexist vigilante Hangman (see the Essential Werewolf by Night). Now, I was totally looking forward to seeing some real girl power with Jessie cleaning that monster's clock, but the Hangman disappears and that fight never happens! How could they very clearly foreshadow that scene, putting such a satisfying image in my head, and not deliver? You call that empowering?
Anyway, I'm still very pleased that I know I'm judging this book by its own merits because Spider-Woman is not a flimsy rehash of Mr. Parker as I had initially suspected. She may have strength, agility, and can cling to walls, but she can also glide on her pitifully small web-wings and fry her foes with her bioelectric "venom" blasts. She can't shoot webbing either, because that would have been really gratuitous. My final verdict on the plagiarism issue is that the Russian super-spy Black Widow is more of a "female Spider-Man" then our hostess is here.
Although this isn't the most solid or engaging Essential out there, Spider-Woman still stands out as a worthwhile purchase for Bronze-Age comic fans. Plus, since the series ran for exactly 50 issues, a second volume should wrap the whole story arc up nicely (I hear that the remaining stories by Chris "I saved the X-Men" Claremont are the best of the bunch). In the meantime, I invite my fellow comic enthusiasts to come for the high-flying and off-beat super-heroine action, and stay for Carmine Infantino's sultry and lurid artwork (Like in #10, Jessie could bake a potato in that dress! Grrroowwwlll!).
[Note: All chauvinism in the preceding review was intended as satire and should be interpreted for comedic purposes only.]
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