Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew)

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Spider-Woman, the Marvel Comics heroine whose civilian name is Jessica Drew, began as a legal precaution. In 1978, Marvel's publisher Stan Lee explained that he feared a rival company might publish its own book called Spider-Woman and then claim the right to the name. His solution was to rush one out first. "I wanted to protect the name," he said.

  Lee had a painful precedent in mind. Years earlier Marvel had released a hero called Wonder Man, and DC Comics, which had Wonder Woman, sued. Lee agreed to discontinue Wonder Man. Then DC introduced Power Girl, right after Marvel had introduced Power Man. His reaction was blunt: "Oh, boy. How unfair."

  A hero made to guard a trademark is an unlikely candidate for decades of stories. What did her creators actually imagine she would be? Why did readers keep seeing a second-hand version of someone else? And how did a placeholder end up a heroine whom critics rank among the best of her kind?

  4

• 2. A Spider Turned Human

  ›

  Marvel Spotlight #32, dated February 1977, was meant to be a one-off. Most accounts say it existed only to establish the trademark. Instead it sold unexpectedly well, and writer and editor Marv Wolfman was asked to build an ongoing series around her.

  Two people shaped her first appearance. Writer Archie Goodwin designed her origin and basic character, and freelancer Marie Severin designed her look. Goodwin's idea was startling: she would be a real spider that had evolved into a human being.

  Wolfman found that premise too implausible for readers of the mid-1970s. In a four-issue story in Marvel Two-in-One, he gave her a new history. She became a human woman named Jessica Drew, a name stitched together from his daughter's first name and the surname of the fictional detective Nancy Drew. Her memories of being a spider were false, implanted by the terrorist group Hydra. For her own series, her costume was also changed to include a long wig.

  Wolfman populated her world with a mentor named Charles Magnus and with enemies including Morgan le Fay and the Brothers Grimm. Even so, he left after issue #8, citing a heavy workload. Years later he was candid about it: "If truth be told, I never felt comfortable writing her." He added, "I never found a handle for her and kept trying until I finally decided to leave the book."

  His replacement was Mark Gruenwald, a newcomer to comics, working alongside the veteran penciler Carmine Infantino.

  3641386

• 3. Arachne in Hydra's Grip

  ›

  In the original telling, Jessica Miriam Drew was born in London to Jonathan and Merriam Drew. The family moved to a laboratory near Mount Wundagore, built by her father together with the High Evolutionary. There she fell gravely ill after months of exposure to uranium.

  To save her, her father injected her with an experimental serum made from the blood of irradiated spiders. A colleague named Wyndham then placed her in a genetic accelerator while the serum took effect. Her mother died soon afterward, and her father left for the United States. The machine slowed her aging, so she was 17 years old when she was finally removed.

  The residents of Mount Wundagore, the High Evolutionary's New Men, shunned her, and she set out to find human society. Instead a Hydra reserve unit led by Count Otto Vermis captured her. He erased her memories, brainwashed her, and gave her the codename Arachne.

  A top Hydra agent named Jared trained her in combat and espionage and was also ordered to seduce her. Once she loved him, he let S.H.I.E.L.D. capture him so she could be pushed into assassinating its commander, Nick Fury. During the fight with Fury, she accidentally killed Jared and learned what Hydra really was.

  She attacked the Hydra base and sent Vermis into a fatal crash. Before he died, he triggered memory implants telling her she was an evolved spider who had killed a man before joining Hydra. Despondent, she wandered the woods and was recaptured and hypnotized.

  Freedom came when she was sent to abduct Alicia Masters and clashed with Ben Grimm. That fight let her shake off the brainwashing. She and Grimm then met Modred the Mystic, who removed the implants and restored her real memories.

  A later retelling, the miniseries Spider-Woman: Origin, changed the details. In it, her powers came from a laser beam carrying the DNA of several spider species, which struck her mother's womb. Her parents, trying to harness spiders' ability to adapt, were behind that experiment. She was born at Wundagore, and her father was funded by Hydra and worked with Miles Warren. After her parents vanished, Hydra recruited her under false pretenses, and she was trained and mentored by Taskmaster.

  Back in the original continuity, she moved to London after her recovery and struggled to adjust. There the sorcerer Magnus offered his help, and he soon told her that her father had been murdered, sending her hunting for the killer.

  3839404117

• 4. Writers Come and Go

  ›

  Mark Gruenwald, taking over from Wolfman, kept the series dark and eerie. He also pushed Jessica's shyness and social awkwardness to the front. Almost everyone she met reacted badly to her, and the cause turned out to be fear-inducing pheromones, a power nobody had revealed before. Gruenwald also created Lindsay McCabe, an outgoing aspiring actress who became her best friend and the center of her supporting cast.

  Marvel advertised the series heavily, and an animated television show aired during Gruenwald's run. Even so, new editor Roger Stern recalled that the book had already stopped being a top seller. Wolfman had deliberately avoided Spider-Man crossovers, and her powers differed from his. Readers still saw a female Spider-Man. Stern said they saw her, and later the She-Hulk, "as running a good idea into the ground."

  Issue #20 brought a clean sweep as Gruenwald, Infantino and Stern all left. New writer Michael Fleisher made Jessica a bounty hunter and dropped the macabre tone. He also abandoned open subplots, such as the mystery of Magnus's disappearance. In their place came criminal masterminds and a love interest who adored her costumed identity but ignored her civilian one. Many fans complained that he had stripped away everything special about her.

  Fleisher stayed through issue #32. Then Chris Claremont, already a big name from Uncanny X-Men, took over and turned her into a private investigator, with Steve Leialoha as artist. After 13 issues, he and Leialoha left for other projects. The series had already drawn criticism for its fast turnover of writers.

  Gruenwald came back as editor, only to be told that falling sales meant cancellation, with issue #50 as the last. He hired Ann Nocenti and Brian Postman, both new to comics, for the final four issues. His theory was that their lack of experience might send the series out with a bang. He restored the macabre mood and revived the Magnus subplot.

  The last issue carried a photo cover of Marvel staffers in costume, including Gruenwald and Nocenti. Inside, Spider-Woman died in her final battle with Morgan le Fay. Nocenti defended the choice: "These are licensed characters and you want them to have a forever life. At the same time, they live in a violent world and occasionally you feel like someone has to die, otherwise it's too unreal."

  Readers were furious, and both Nocenti and Gruenwald came to regret it. Gruenwald took the backlash hardest. He and Stern had swapped roles on Avengers, and he told Stern to write a story bringing Jessica back. Less than a year after her death, The Avengers #240-241, dated February-March 1984, showed the heroes finding her in dire medical condition. They saved her with help from Doctor Strange.

  Her recovery would be followed by a long stretch in which almost no one knew what to do with her.

  4344455153

• 5. Wilderness and an Imposter

  ›

  In 1988, Jessica and Lindsay McCabe joined the supporting cast of Wolverine, appearing through the first 16 issues of his series. Jessica never wore her costume there, though she often used her powers to help him. She returned briefly in issues #27 and 125-128.

  Gruenwald made one more attempt in 1996. A short back-up story in Sensational Spider-Man Annual '96, titled "The Return of Spider-Woman," put her in costume for the first time in over a decade. It ended with a teaser for further adventures in Spider-Man Team Up. Gruenwald died before those stories could be written, and later comics treated the back-up as non-canon.

  In 1999 she was again a supporting player, this time to a third Spider-Woman, Mattie Franklin, in the first 11 issues of the third volume. Her path back began with a 2003 story arc in Alias, written by Brian Michael Bendis. Bendis would write most of her adventures over the next decade.

  In January 2005, New Avengers launched with Jessica, in costume, apparently among its members. That Jessica was later revealed as an imposter. Even so, the exposure revived interest in the original. On the 21st of December 2005, Marvel released the first issue of Spider-Woman: Origin, a five-part miniseries by Bendis and Brian Reed, drawn by the Luna Brothers, Jonathan and Joshua. The same day saw the first of two Essentials paperbacks collecting her entire original run, with the second following in 2007.

  The imposter's identity came out in the 2009 "Secret Invasion" storyline. Almost every appearance she had made in New Avengers over four years had been the work of a shape-shifting Skrull, with the exception of some flashbacks. In the story, a Hydra agent known as Connely had offered to restore her powers, which had been stolen by a villain named Charlotte Witter. The Hydra cell was really a Skrull team that abducted her so that their Queen, Veranke, could take her place.

  Bendis said he had planned it from the start. "You can go back to issue #1 and see hints," he said. He added that this explained why a Spider-Woman series never appeared during those years. He had written an issue revealing her as a Skrull, but it felt like selling readers something other than what they thought they were buying.

  The real Jessica came home and joined the New Avengers. She also took a post at S.W.O.R.D. at Abigail Brand's invitation, hunting hostile aliens on Earth. A second self-titled limited series, drawn by Alex Maleev, ran seven issues. It appeared in print and as a motion comic. She then stayed on through the 2010-2013 Avengers series, from issue #1 in July 2010 to issue #34 in January 2013.

  A larger event would soon put her at the center of a crowd of spider-themed heroes.

  5556616263

• 6. Spider-Verse and Motherhood

  ›

  In 2014, the "Spider-Verse" event brought spider-themed heroes to Earth-13 to resist Morlun and his family, the Inheritors. Hunted by them, Jessica was sent by Spider-Man to the Loomworld, the Inheritors' home. There she replaced her own doppelganger, who had been Morlun's lover. The intelligence she gathered about the Master Weaver helped the Spider Army win.

  A new ongoing series by Dennis Hopeless grew out of the event. In its fifth issue, her costume was redesigned for the first time since the 1970s. Marvel's 2015 "Secret Wars" event cut the run short at issue #10. Within the story, Reed Richards and Susan Storm picked Jessica and Natasha Romanoff to copilot a ship carrying a handpicked few to restart humanity. The Children of Tomorrow from the Ultimate Universe shot it down, and everyone aboard died. Later events undid that timeline and the deaths.

  Hopeless relaunched the series several months later with a new issue #1. Jessica was in her second trimester of pregnancy and working as a private investigator. Readers debated the father's identity. She eventually explained that a relationship more than nine months earlier had stirred her wish for a family, but the man left before she could tell him. She went to a sperm bank instead and gave birth to a son, Gerry, who inherited her powers.

  She had also left the Avengers to help ordinary people solve crimes, enlisting Ben Urich and Roger Gocking, known as the Porcupine. After Hobgoblin nearly killed the Porcupine, he and Jessica fell in love and began raising Gerry together. That volume ended after 17 issues.

  The "Spider-Geddon" storyline later pulled her back into the Spider-Army. She helped chase a crystal holding the life force of Solus. Captured by Jennix, she was freed when the Spider-Army defeated the Inheritors with cloning technology that turned them into babies.

  In "End of the Spider-Verse," Spider-Man Noir, controlled by Shathra, attacked her and severed her from the Web of Life and Destiny, effectively killing her. Once the Web was cleansed, she came back. Then "Gang War" revealed the cost of her absence: Hydra had kidnapped Gerry and rapidly aged him into an adult. They manipulated him into serving as Green Mamba.

  In the fall of 2019, Marvel announced another ongoing series, written by Karla Pacheco and drawn by Pere Perez. Its first issue arrived in March 2020 with a costume designed by Dave Johnson. From issue #11, she returned to the costume she wore in the 1970s.

  6970717277

• 7. Powers and Training

  ›

  Jessica can lift around seven tons at her peak. Beyond raw strength, she has superhuman speed, stamina, agility and reflexes, and a body that withstands far more punishment than an ordinary person's. Her hearing and sense of smell are also heightened. Her sense of smell once let her tell a life-model decoy from the real Nick Fury.

  Her palms and soles secrete a fluid that lets her cling to solid surfaces like a true spider. She resists all terrestrial poisons and toxins. She is also immune to radiation, though the first dose makes her dizzy. After that, she is completely immune.

  A stranger ability is passive. Her body gives off pheromones that provoke pleasure and attraction in others, depending on unknown factors that may include gender and mood. She normally wears a chemical "perfume" that makes them inert.

  Her body also produces bio-electrical energy that she can release from her hands. She calls these discharges "venom blasts," though they have nothing to do with poison. They typically cause pain and unconsciousness. At their greatest intensity, they can kill like a lightning bolt or pierce solid steel.

  Her Hydra-designed costume has web-like wings. Combined with her natural bio-electricity, they let her glide on air currents. She has lost her powers repeatedly, in many different ways, but after the Secret Invasion they returned greater than ever.

  She is also an accomplished fighter whose studies include boxing, capoeira, judo, karate and tai chi. She has trained in fencing and the use of many other weapons. Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D. both taught her covert operations, stealth and espionage. She speaks Korean, Russian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German. She also has undercover detective training, and sometimes carries a Walther PPK handgun.

  How readers and critics judged this arsenal is a separate story.

  348687

• 8. Verdicts and Variants

  ›

  Sales figures for Spider-Woman #1 show how the audience rose and fell across reboots. The 2009 issue sold out in September 2009, and Diamond Comics Distributors ranked it 45th that month. The 2014 issue ranked 5th in November 2014. The 2015 issue ranked 37th in November 2015. The 2020 issue was the best-selling comic book of March 2020.

  Critics were more divided. IGN's Jeff Lake gave the 2014 debut 5 out of 10, calling it more a tie-in to Spider-Verse than a true solo launch. ComicBook.com's Chase Magnett gave the 2015 debut a B+ and praised how it handled the pregnancy. Matthew Aguilar of the same site gave the 2020 debut 5 out of 5.

  Gizmodo ranked Jessica first on its 2017 list of the "greatest Spider-Women of all time." Screen Rant's Joshua Isaak offered a theory for why she is less popular than Spider-Man. He called her "an excellent character cursed with a subpar rogues gallery." He also pointed out that casual fans assume she is connected to Spider-Man.

  Alternate versions have tested the character in odd directions. In "Age of X," she is Redback, an Avenger hunting mutants who sacrifices herself to stop the Hulk from destroying a mutant sanctuary. In Marvel Adventures Spider-Man, she is a substitute teacher at Peter Parker's school. In the MC2 reality, she has a son named Gerald, called Gerry, whose illness her radioactive blood caused.

  On screen, Joan Van Ark voiced her in a self-titled television series. Video games have featured her many times, including Marvel Ultimate Alliance, voiced by Tasia Valenza, and Marvel Snap. SlashFilm polled fans on which hero they most wanted in the Marvel films, and Spider-Woman won with just over 32% of the vote.

  Her cinematic debut came in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse in 2023, voiced by Issa Rae. That version, called Jess Drew, is an African American Spider-Woman who rides a motorcycle. She leads Miguel O'Hara's Spider-Society and mentors Gwen Stacy. Her design blends two comic versions of Jessica, taking fingertip webs from one and the pregnancy from the other. A self-titled spin-off film is planned.

  9396288590