Avengers… West Coast! Previously known as The West Coast Avengers. Why’d they change it? Who knows? Founded (I think?) by Hawkeye earlier in the 80s and frequently counting many of the most famous Avengers among their ranks, the 2nd Avengers team had a pretty long career before changing their name to Force Works and becoming super-edgy 90s nonsense. Force Works. Anyway, Spider-Man is here. And I guess we’re getting the Julia Carpenter Spider-Woman’s origin, only 6 years after her introduction in Secret Wars? Timely. Marvel’s 2nd-ever writer, Roy Thomas, helms this one, part of a nearly 60 issue run often co-written by his wife Dann, but she doesn’t seem to be involved here. And it’s drawn by our old pal Dave Ross, on hand for in Spider-Man’s appearances in Punisher War Journal 14 & 15 and that one Dominic Fortune 2-parter in Web 71 & 72. Tim Dzon inks and, you guessed it, Bob Sharen colors. Man, that guy did a lot of comics. We open on a lawyer working late in his office in a high rise in Century City when unseen assailants appear, rough him up and leave him webbed to a wall for a security guard to find. From that, we cut to…
Peter Parker attends the press conference, but as the informant guy is preparing his material, we learn the paper’s lawyer is the guy in California who got webbed, and then some webbing starts happening here, too. Then the informant guy appears on stage, confused, not sure how he got there, and with something gross growing on his neck and he falls into the crowd of reporters.
We’re 9 pages into West Coast Avengers without involving them at all, so it’s time to meet the team!
A lot of familiar faces. Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, USAgent (The replacement Captain America we saw in TAC 137 & 138), Iron Man, Wonder Man, and the only one who hasn’t appeared on the blog before, The Living Lightning, which is not a name that rolls off the tongue. The Thomases created him early in their tenure on the title, about 20 issues prior to this. So now the only person we’re missing is Spider-Woman, and, well, here she comes. A lot to introduce here.
Of all the ways we could get to her origin, this is not the most momentous. After making her debut in Secret Wars 6 and finishing out that series, she kinda popped up in random places over the years (Including 2 more comics we’ll see eventually that came out several years before this), but never really hung around anywhere long enough to get much character development… until The Thomases added her to this cast about 14 issues prior to this.
She could also stick to walls and make webs by thinking about them, which is… weird. So they gave her a suit and called her Spider-Woman. I’m pretty sure Jessica Drew was “dead” at the time, so the name was available. The complicated part is the suit. Because Spider-Man copied it when he “created” his black suit, aka willed the symbiote to look like that. Except now, they’ve done all these insane, stupid retcons to the symbiotes such that they all have that spider design on them, naturally, due to it looking more or less like the symbol of an ancient, evil god they all worship. I know. A far cry from the suit’s origins. So why’d some government stooges just happen to dress her like the followers of an evil space god? I wonder if someone’s ever bothered to try to explain it. Anyway! Before she ever did any superheroing, she went back to Denver to see her ex-husband & child, and then much of Denver just happened to get yoinked into Battleworld during Secret Wars, and she then partnered up with all the heroes. When that was over, Val Cooper put her on Freedom Force, a government team made up of former Brotherhood of Evil Mutants members working off their sentence, rather Suicide Squad-esque. Her ex-husband didn’t like her moving to DC with the kid, so…
So, in short order, she meets that Clemson guy, who’s a world-class jerk and threatens her daughter. Spider-Woman chucks that guy into a wall and says she quits the commission, effective immediately, and if they don’t like it, they can sue. Then we learn Clemson works for The Conclave, some bad guys, and was supposed to try to recruit her. Good job, dude. His evil bosses, who secretly control the government or whatever, are glad he didn’t tell her about them. She’ss off to finally meet up with The Avengers, and has even brought a lil’ Spider-Girl mask for her daughter.
Awkward. The Avengers head out to watch the circus, as the Liberty Party candidate gives his law & order speech, like so many previous comic book politicians, and tries to make it seem like The Avengers endorse him since they’re present. Then the lights go out.
What a busy comic! Ya don’t see them that stuffed with stuff anymore, even in 1992. 2 more issues of Spider-Man’s adventure on the West Coast remain. We’ll get to know “Deathweb” next time, one assumes.