Customer Reviews

Essential Spider-Woman, Vol. 1 (Marvel Essentials) (v. 1)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Spider-Woman / Jessica Drew was one of Marvel Comic's 70's female character attempts, and one of only several to survive to this day.
The character had an exteme rollar coaster ride of highs and lows in terms of story and art. I gave this book only three stars because the first several attempts at the character (Marvel Spotlight & Marvel 2-in-1) were only so-so, as were issues 17 - 25 of her own book. If Marvel comics puts out a volume 2 (covering SW 26-50,Avengers Annual #10, Avengers 240/241, X-Men 148, Mavel 2-in-1 #85, and for good measure, a segement of Captain America # 281), issues 26-32 and 47-49 of her own book will also be only so-so. However the rest, is quite good. Just in totally different ways. The original 16 issues had Carmine Infantino on art (normally not a fan, but his style fit SW in a way) and Marv Wolfaman and Mark Guenwald on story. Both writers focused on keeping SW away from the traditional superhero, working more to discover her past and encountering strange people and creatures along the way. It had an off-beat / horror feel that worked for the character. She was a different character from Spider-Man. But then they had problems figuring out where to go with the character until Chris Claremont took SW over around issue 34. Claremont took the character into the private investigator/spy arena with Steve Leialoha on art duties (personally my favorite of the SW artists). He made the character very spy savy, very confident in herself and strategically intellegent. By issue 38, the women's movement had slowed down and sales of the comic forced it to go bi-monthly. Claremont and Leialoha left with issue 46 and the book took a horrible turn and ended with at least a half-decent finale issue at #50. The SW part of the character was put to rest in Avengers #241. Fans off and on for years have been teased with her return, but it never seemed to happen, until Brian Bendis.

Bendis, it is rumored, was to make his new Alias book's main character be Jessica Drew, but the idea was nixed by Marvel. When asked to re-launch the Avengers, Bendis was able to bring the character back to much fan applause. Currently there is a Spider-Woman "Origin" mini-series and continuing series in the works.

So, should you try this book out? Yes and no. If you're looking for Spider-Woman history and don't mind off-beat stories, it's interesting to read. However, don't expect the superhero version you're currently being presented with in New Avengers. That version of the character won't really happen until SW Vol.2 comes out. SW Vol. 1 has kinda a superhero meets mild horror feel with some really sappy woman's romance stuff near the end (yeah, told you they lost direction).

My personal opinion falls this way. I like interesting characters. I like seeing how they develop. The first 16 issues and then the Claremont run, really made me love this character. Here was a woman character, who wasn't defined by her male counterpart. Heck, she didn't need a counterpart.

By the way, the listing is wrong,J. Michael Straczynski had nothing to do with this character. The book is by Marv Wolfman, Mark Gruenwald, Archie Goodwin, Sal Bucema, Carmine Infantino, Jim Mooney, Ron Wilson, Steve Leialoha and friends.

Marvel tried really...really hard in the 1970's and early 80's to develop a popular female super hero into her own on-going title. To that end the era gave us characters such as Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, Dazzler, and Spider-Woman. Of course three of these were simply female versions of the more popular male characters. If one judges based strictly on longevity, the most popular character was Spider-Woman who lasted for 50 issues from 1978 to 1982. Certainly nothing to sneeze at and it was longer than many other male heroes lasted in their own series.

She made her first appearance in Marvel Spotlight #32 (which is included in this book). Jessica Drew is Spider-woman and had a rather colorful origin that included being given an experimental drug to try and cure radiation poison and then being placed into a genetic accelerator that slowed her aging. Sounds kind of backwards though doesn't it? Years later she would be release and recruited by HYDRA and then would turn on them and become a super hero in L.A., and eventually meet Spiderman.

Jessica Drew possesses superhuman strength. Her agility, reflexes, endurance, and speed are likewise enhanced. Her hearing is hyper-acute. She can cling to walls and other surfaces, and her enhanced musculature and stamina allow her to easily lift and carry an undetermined amount of weight while clinging to walls.

She is immune to all forms of toxic substances and radiations. She also has the ability to store bioelectricity in her body, which she can release at will in powerful discharges that she calls "venom blasts." Her metabolism generates certain types of pheromones that elicit attraction and/or repulsion on others, depending on many, still unknown, factors which might include gender and mood.

Throughout the fifty issue run Spider-woman fought mainly minor league villains and she was eventually thought to have been killed. It would turn out that she was only trapped in the astral plane and Dr. Strange would restore her to her body years later and she would become a member of the Avengers.

Spider-woman suffered with fairly weak artists during the early issues. Carmine Infantino's style that was so bold in the 60's now just looked old in the late 1970's. Other artists included Steve Leialoha (a big improvement over Infantino). But what stood out to me and others were the usually dynamic covers, particularly those done by Dave Cockrum. A favorite was #32 by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson with their tribute to Universal Monsters. Chris Claremont wrote issues #34 to #46 and they were some of the best.

All in all, Spider-woman really is a forgotten gem of the 1970's and I give a lot of credit to Marvel for putting out this first volume which covers ½ of the 50 issue run and can't wait until volume two.

Reviewed by Tim Janson

This is actually my first foray into the world of comic books. I found the art work to be very well done. I was disappointed that the panels are all in black & white. I understand that this cuts down on cost but it would have been nice if the title page for each story had been in color.

Also, there is no chapter list or page numbers, which I think would have been helpful, even if it's not exactly standard comic book format. This is a pretty big volume and it would be nice to not have to flip through the entire book to find something I'm looking for. On my second day of reading, the cover & first page started to come loose from the binding. So, overall, I feel that the quality of the book could have been much better.

The stories are quite interesting & Spider-Woman is an intriguing character. She meets some famous characters that you might not expect to see on the pages of a comic book, such as the wizard Merlin (a.k.a. Magnus). While she is an extremely strong & talented fighter, there are several instances where she proves to be an intelligent strategist, which is not something I expected to see.

Her love interests didn't seem to fit, they just weren't believable & were a little rushed...except for the one with The Shroud, which I wish could have been explored a little more. Overall, I enjoyed the book & will probably get the second volume.

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!

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.]

I started to love Dazzler and Spider-woman because they were translated and published here when I was kid. I had to get this book...

Spider Woman is NOT female version of Spider-man. She has two abilities that relates her to Peter - being able to stick to walls and super strength. She can glide through air and fire 'venom blasts'. Spider Woman does not fight Doom, Kingpin or some other people from Marvel universe. Her tale begins with some crossover stories ( guest starring FF Thing, Nick Fury etc. ) but continues in different direction in her own book. Some stories, like eye of needle and brother Grim have that Vertigo feeling, some are detective stories.

If Astro City is superhero comic but still a good product, this one is too !!!

What a great series this was to read and I hope it comes out in color. For 50 issues Spider-Woman had her own title and what I liked about this series is that she had to deal with her own personal issues in addition to fighting evil. I'm not sure why it didn't last past 50 issues but I'm glad to have this collection.

Jessica (Spider-Woman) Drew made her debut in February 1977 in Marvel Spotlight #32 - which is included in this volume - and had a nice run of 50 comic books from April 1978 to June 1983.

The initial 25 comics of her series is included, along with Marvel Two-in-One #29-#33. The artwork is excellent, though it took several issues to get the story line confidently moving forward (there are many parallels to the transformation of Peter Parker to Spider-Man). The character also had an animated series, appearing from September 1979 to March 1980 on ABC's Sunshine Saturday Morning.

This is a nice collection for a solid character that may not carry the same punch with collectors today, but had "All The World Against Her" back in the day.

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.

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.