Thursday, February 11, 2016

Catching up on Comics with CGraig: Spider-Woman #2-3

(Marvel, 2016)


I find it interesting that Spider-Woman is now more affiliated with Captain Marvel than Spider-Man these days (note the good Captain's positioning on the covers of 2 & 3... particularly in the logo of #3), but then again Jessica has been fairly independent from Peter's affairs almost from day one.  In fact, it usually seems weird when the Spiders Man and Woman collide.  Unlike Supergirl or She-Hulk who are gender analogues to a certain extent of their male counterparts, Spider-Woman has a very broad breadth of distance to be her own thing.  It was more in the Ultimates universe where the quasi- transgendered Spider-Woman worked as an Agent of Shield and mentor to Miles Morales (didn't read any of the Ultimate Peter Parker run, so I'm  not sure how much she factored into his life... though I suppose she'd be fairly closely tied being a genetically manipulated clone of Parker).  

I get the feeling that with the post-Secret Wars relaunch of the title Marvel is taking the opportunity to kind of make Jessica Drew more like Jessica Jones, given the popularity of the Netflix series and the otherwise nominal cache Jones has in the comic book world).  Though strangely,  they're making Jessica Drew more like the comics JJ than the TV one.  Then again, Jessica Jones was originally intended to be Jessica Drew before Marvel brass had second thoughts about putting a Spider-character in as the lead of an adult-themed book.

Just like JJ, Drew is a private investigator, she's best friends with Carol Danvers, and now she's pregnant, which is a notable comparison because not many people get pregnant in comics (can we get a run-down of all the knocked-up superheroes in comics history please?).

We've skipped past conception and the first nine months to find a bursting-at-the-seams Jessica in an intergalactic birthing hospital (at Carol's insistence)... which just so happened to fall under siege of some Skrulls just after she arrived.  Jessica has history with the Skrulls so no matter how pregnant she is, she's not just going to sit by and let the dimple-chinned freaks get away with...whatever they're doing (she doesn't really care all that much). 

She has to make her way through the hospital at one point,  which finds her intruding on some other patients unintentionally...and Javier Rodriguez really gets to let loose creatively here, with a trio of pages that would make Kirby and Ditko pause fro a moment.  I could go for a whole issue of pin-up pages of Rodriguez's vision of this alien hospital.

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