I, like most of the world, was profoundly bored and confused by Madame Web.
I know Sony and Marvel are tied up in Spider-Man rights, because Sony owns the rights to certain supporting Spidey characters, but only Marvel/Disney can use the wall crawling hero in movies, so… why even try? So many questions…
Anyway, I was disappointed because this is probably the only Spider-Woman movie we’re gonna see for a while, and I’ve always been a Spider-Woman fan. In fact, I think I’d go as far to say she’s my favorite superheroine.
I had a lot of VHS tapes of Marvel cartoons as a kid. One in particular was an episode of the Spider-Woman cartoon show from 1979.
I’m not gonna lie… it’s bad. All 16 episodes are on Disney+ now, so I’ll throw it on once in a while, but it’s tough to get through an episode, except maybe on mute with captions on and Tangerine Dream playing in the background.
It has almost nothing to do with the comic book series on which it was based.
Which kind of sums up the problem with the character of Spider-Woman; no one has ever understood what to do with her.
Origin(s)
I’m not an official comic book historian, but as a fan who likes to break everything down, here’s a quick rundown of Spider Woman;
The Marvel character was created purely so that DC Comics couldn’t trademark their own Spider-Woman character. Spider-Man was without a doubt, the best selling comic book Marvel was putting out in the 70’s. They must have been so paranoid to protect the brand, and profit off more merchandise. This was what was known as the beginning of the “Bronze age” of comics, where Spider-Man, Superman and Batman were now multimedia pop cultural figures. By 1977 you were already seeing Spider-Man lunch boxes.
So Marvel was like “not so fast!” and introduced the character in Marvel Spotlight #32 in February, 1977.
The credited creators for this first appearance were writer, Archie Goodwin and artist, Marie Severin.
This introduces the character as a former spider creature, who was turned into a woman by the High Evolutionary (the villain from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3).
This was meant to be a one-off character with no serious thought into a continuing series, but guess what? This issue sold like crazy!! Readers wanted more Spider-Woman.
Goodwin assigned Marv Wolfman as the writer for the newly ordered Spider-Woman series, with legendary artist Carmine Infantino as the artist taking over for Severin. Her costume is mostly unchanged, except now her long dark hair is waving around.
Wolfman retconned her first appearance origin story to make it that Spider-Woman was an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. named Jessica Drew (named after Wolfman’s daughter and her favorite detective, Nancy Drew).
Drew got her powers as a young girl when she was bitten by a poisonous spider and to save her life, her father Dr. Alexander Drew, injected her with an experimental “spider serum.” The serum did save her life, but gave her unexpected powers. It’s never explained what this mysterious “serum” was supposed to be used for or why it was experimental. Like… what was it made of? No one knows.
Anyway, she grew up to be an agent for S.H.I.E.L.D, where she was trained to basically become a ninja, then she and her father are kidnapped by HYDRA, her father is killed, and she is brainwashed to believe she was a spider who was changed into a woman to forget about her father, so she can be a mindless slave for HYDRA (phew, what a mouthful).
Now, free from HYDRA’s control, she settles in London, where she starts her journey to discover who killed her father.
While wandering around the streets of London, lonely and confused, she meets an old sorcerer named Magnus who enlists her help with fighting Morgan Le Faye from the Arthurian legends.
Then in issue #3, she moves from London to Los Angeles. Magnus is still a supporting character, and the macabre magic stuff becomes a main part of her rogues gallery.
Wolfman left the series after issue #8, admitting later “I didn’t feel comfortable writing her. I never had a handle on the character.”
Wolfman left Marvel in the early 80’s to work on his career defining run on The New Teen Titans for DC Comics.
Newbie writer Mark Gruenwald was brought on to the series. His run continued the themes Wolfman set up like searching for her father’s killer, and her rogues gallery of occult villains. He also introduced the idea of Jessica feeling isolated from people because she grew up on a S.H.I.E.L.D. military base, so she doesnt know how to act like a normal person and is all uptight in her life, except when she’s Spider-Woman.
To contrast this, he introduced the character of outgoing aspiring actress Lindsay McCabe, Jessica’s roommate and best friend. She would become a mainstay in the Spider-Woman supporting cast going forward.
After issue #20, Gruenwald and Infantino were reassigned to other projects. The remainder of the series had a crazy revolving door of writers. No longer was she looking for her father’s killer, she didn’t have the immortal sorcerer Magnus giving her advice, Morgan Le Faye wasn’t one of her villains anymore. She had a pretty lame lineup of traditional greedy bank robbing costumed villains, and the things that made her interesting were abandoned.
Even Chris Claremont wrote for Spider-Woman during his legendary X-Men run. He made her a bounty hunter/private eye, who specialises in looking for missing children, with Lindsay McCabe as her gal friday getting the scoop on underworld goings on through her contacts from the Hollywood party scene.
So, even though her run was inconsistent, I still think any of these setups they never followed through on are ten times better than what eventually became Madame Web.
I’d see a movie about a woman in LA who moonlights as a costumed vigilante looking for missing kids, fights villains like Morgan Le Faye or The Brothers Grimm, and takes order from a medieval sorcerer who runs a magic shop. That sounds like an awesome movie! Even a villain like Turner D. Century would be a better antagonist than Ezekiel Sims who does nothing except remind us that Spider-Man isn’t in this movie.
Powers
The creators tried very hard to make her as different from Spider-Man as possible, so let’s go through Jessica Drew’s powers;
Venom Blasts: Jess can shoot bolts of electricity called “venom blasts” which can stun her opponents.
Super strength: Similar to Spider-Man, Spider-Woman is crazy strong, and because she was trained to be a spy, she’s skilled at hand to hand and weapons combat.
Flight: Spider-Man can swing around from building to building using his web slinging, but Spider-Woman can straight up glide on air currents using the webbing under her arms.
Fear Pheromones: later in her original run, Jessica realizes she has an extra power; she can produce pheromones which trigger a severe emotional response in people around her, causing them to lose their minds from fear. This plays a huge part in her feelings of isolation and why she can’t form meaningful relationships for very long.