Spiderwoman #1 Yoon Cover
Spider-Woman #1
Marvel Comics
Written by Karla Pacheco
Art by Pere Perez
32 pages $3.99
Solicit: SPIDER-WOMAN IS BACK, AND PULLING NO PUNCHES!
Jessica Drew hasn’t been feeling like herself lately (she’s not a Skrull, we promise). When the angry, irritable, and unwell Spider-Woman takes a simple security gig to help get back on her feet, she finds herself besieged by unknown forces out to destroy everything around her. What’s wrong with Jessica? Just how DID she get this job? And who are these violent lunatics who keep trying to blow her up? WHO CARES? Does Spider-Woman have someone to punch? THAT’S ALL THAT MATTERS.
An explosive new series that pushes Spider-Woman into new heights of action and adventure from the mad minds of Karla Pacheco and Pere Pérez, this is the Spider-Woman book you’ve been waiting for!
Creative team:
Karla Pacheco is not a name I recognize but with no evidence, I’m going to say she’s Carlos Pacheco’s spunky kid sister. Pacheco got her start writing for Rick and Morty comics at Oni before working on the 2019 Punisher annual and the same year’s Fantastic Four 2099 one-shot.
Pere Perez has been around since 2011 when he started as a fill-in artist on Birds of Prey and Batgirl at DC. From there Perez sharpened his talents at Valiant for several years before coming to Marvel. His art is clean, sharp and damn impressive whether Spider-Woman is punching bad guys or cuddling her new baby.
When paired with the colors of a veteran like Frank D’Armata the art just pops and really looks slick. I should mention, as Joe pointed out during my review on the show Paolo Siqueria was on art duties for the backup story about Jessica’s new costume and again, it was just gorgeous. No complaint’s here artwise.
What Happens:
Jessica is back in the game running around in the pages of her team book Strikeforce, which gets a nod here (is anyone still reading Strikeforce?) and looking for a job that pays in the meantime. So, of course, she takes a job working private security for a billionaire who’s daughter has been receiving kidnapping threats. When the kidnappers decide to act on their threat and show up it turns out something is going on with her powers too. Now, I’m not a kidnapper but it seems like making a threat before the actual kidnapping is a terrible idea, right? Again, not a kidnapper, but the element of surprise seems like it
Pacheco’s script uses time-jumps to tell the story and it never got confusing but the time-jumps also didn’t add much to the story either. The story begins with Jessica in a situation, then jumps to 2 days ago for some of the situation set up, then jumps to 2 weeks ago for more set up. Again it wasn’t confusing but felt a little unnecessary.
I liked the dialogue, Jessica’s voice and character is great and continues what I loved about the previous Dennis Hopeless run. It’s cool to see a character trying to balance hero and mom responsibilities but I would’ve liked to see a little more of that. I’m going to sound like old-grumpy-fan-boy here, but I have to wonder if Spider-Woman can sustain a monthly series. I love the character personally and would love to read a good monthly series but I might be in the minority here. Brian Michael Bendis and Dennis Hopeless both took a shot at Spider-Woman not too long ago and both their series were great until they got canceled.
Conclusion:
This is a solid issue of Spider-Woman, I even like the new costume, but I can’t call it great. Marvel is publishing a lot of comics that are fine at best and while the art shines here the story is fine. The only new idea is the problem with Jessica’s powers and that could be interesting going forward but I can’t say I need to know what’s going on yet. I like the way Pacheco is writing Jessica (there was a weird scene where she takes a cab home. Can’t she fly?) but if this series is going to break the Spiderwoman curse she is going to have to kick the story up a notch.
Rating: Skim it
