Before we get to the dreaded The Other crossover, we got a few other things to check out, starting with a 2-issue, Spider-Woman-focused New Avengers arc unfortunately drawn by Frank Cho. This story features one of the most infamously childish things he’s ever drawn, which is saying a lot for that guy. If you think women were comically oversexualized in his previous appearances on this blog, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Not thrilled about it, but here we are. He inks himself, and Jason Keith colors. Bendis, of course, stays on as writer. For years! We begin at the Daily Bugle, where intrepid reporter Kat Farrel has gotten a phone call from her Mom, telling her to look out her window. Kat is not really paying her mother much attention, but does look out the window, and soon she and most of the Bugle staff are staring at Avengers Tower, which now has that big Sentry stuff on top. Then we can get back to the cliffhanger from last issue, where Cap wants to know who Jessica is working for.
Over a 2-page splash, Jess quickly catches us up on her backstory, which is her geneticist parents tinkered with her DNA in the woman, resulting in her powers, and she wound up an Hydra agent, like her parents, before she was out of her teens. This part would soon get retooled in a miniseries written by Bendis called Spider-Woman: Origin, but that’s not under our purview. She talks about how Nick Fury got ahold of her, brought her to the good side of the fence, and she’s had her career since then. She doesn’t mention how she straight up died that one time, and then came back as a ghost, and then came back for real, but on another splash, she does talk about how she lost her powers, and how that led to Hydra coming for her again.
Hydra wanted her to be a SHIELD agent again, so they could use her as a double agent. And she knew if she said no, they’d just kill her. So she called Nick, and…
Here’s how they’re gonna do that:
Why yes, those are breast implants on the table. Frank Cho. Skill of a master draftsman, mind of a 12-year old boy. Anyway, Jess talks about how selfish she was, how she’d do anything to get her powers back, and says it took 17 months of procedures and recovery, but then she was Spider-Woman again. Her powers are actually stronger than before, including full flight instead of just gliding like before (But the gliding was strictly the suit, so, like, how?). We see a brief look at how she was talking to both sides, and mentioning to her Hydra handle a “caterpillar file,” which is either a lucky coincidence or some serious planning ahead for Bendis. Jess says she almost got used to all this lying, and then “you guys went and had your damn Secret War.” Now in trade paperback!
Hey, look, the Sentry showed up to Avengers practice.
Well, that was a whole lotta exposition. Not much Avenger-ing in this issue of Avengers. But Bendis is building things out. He’s got a crazy-ambitious masterplan, so crazy he didn’t even tell anyone what he was doing. It’s genuinely one of the best setups, if not THE best, for a capital-E “Event” in comics history. But as this is coming out, no one, even his editors, know about it. Which is just wild. One more issue with Cho next time.