Now this should be an interesting one. Spider-Woman’s been going almost 2 years, and it’s time to meet Spider-Man. Spider-Woman, of course, has nothing to do with Spider-Man. It’s not like a She-Hulk situation where he’s tied to her origin (That would come in the 2010s with the introduction of the catastrophically lazy character Silk, who, guess what, was bitten by the SAME SPIDER as Peter, but we’ve never seen her in 50 years because reasons. At least they had Miles Morales get bitten by a different spider. Ugh). The Wikipedia page on Spider-Woman quotes a 1978 Comics Journal article about San Lee (I had no idea The Journal was that old) with a refreshingly honest explanation for her creation:
“I suddenly realized that some other company may quickly put out a book like that and claim they have the right to use the name, and I thought we’d better do it real fast to copyright the name. So we just batted one quickly, and that’s exactly what happened. I wanted to protect the name, because it’s the type of thing [where] someone else might say, ‘Hey, why don’t we put out a Spider-Woman; they can’t stop us.’ … You know, years ago we brought out Wonder Man, and [DC Comics] sued us because they had Wonder Woman, and… I said okay, I’ll discontinue Wonder Man. And all of a sudden they’ve got Power Girl [after Marvel had introduced Power Man]. Oh, boy. How unfair.”
But, characters have come from far less auspicious origins before, and Spider-Woman remains a fixture at Marvel today, so I think things worked out. For this issue, we got Mark Gruenwald on deck with the script, Frank Springer penciling and the ubiquitous Mike Esposito on inks. As the issue begins, we learn that Spider-Woman, né Jessica Drew, has gotten into quite a situation. In the space of 24 hours, she was let go from her job due to a previous boss not hiring her through proper channels, with no severance or nuthin’, AND received a letter evicting her from her apartment. And they say Peter Parker has troubles! In a panic, she broke into the office of her now former employer and stole the money they owe her. But now that she’s done it, she feels terrible, and decides to return the money. This is all told in flashback, but doesn’t say it happened last issue. Curious. Anyway, as Spider-Woman glides back to work on her underarm wings that never made much sense to me, we cut to…
Springer’s art is looking far less cartoony than it did in the early 70s here. Peter, of course, isn’t just any dude, and wakes up from the blast much sooner than Spider-Woman anticipated, soon enough to see her flying away. So, he reluctantly switches to Spider-Man to take off after her. He follows at a distance for a bit, but she changes course suddenly and sees him. She tries to lose him, but he’s Spider-Man, so…
It seems like Spider-Man might be famous outside of New York. But then, New York has a zillion superheroes, why should someone in California keep up with them all? I love that she suspects him of copying her, tho, that’s a nice touch.
When Spidey continues the chase, SW tries to scare him off by pushing over an old chimney on him, but obviously, that doesn’t work. He just catches it, to Jessica’s surprise. She realizes he’s stronger than her and gets worried, demanding to know who he is. He’s surprised to have to introduce himself as “your friendly coast-to-coast Spider-Man!” Jessica does what anyone would do in this situations and flashes back to her origin for 2 pages. What? That’s awkward. If you don’t know Spider-Woman’s origin, it is bonkers.
An origin that could only have come from the 70s. So convoluted! Spider-Woman says she doesn’t have to explain anything to Spider-Man and somehow catches him offguard with a dropkick with both feet that must’ve been easy to see coming. Then she flies away. Spiey webs on to her foot, but in an unusual turn for him, her boot falls off under his weight, and suddenly he’s in one of his most frequent pickles, falling to certain doom.
Every erg!
Getting very creepy on that last page, Spidey! What a wild first meeting. I must say, that left me with a whole lot more questions than answers about Jessica’s deal in this period. Maybe that was the idea, hook anyone picking it up for Spider-Man. As luck would have it, one of the older comics I owned for a long time as a kid, another garage sale acquisition, was Spider-Woman #25, and it’s no more illuminating than this one. But this isn’t the last we’ll see of Jessica Drew in these pages, or even during Marv Wolfman’s run on ASM, as it turns out. Maybe we’ll see more of her regular life in the future. In the far-flung future of 2004, she would wind up a member of The New Avengers alongside Spidey and others. But that’s certainly not for right now.