Spider-Woman #21 // Review
Jessica Drew is ostensibly headed out of the country. Before she can make it there, though, she’s going to face a patchwork team of villains who all want her dead in Spider-Woman #21. Writer Karla Pacheco and artist Pere Perez wrap up a two-year run with Jessica with the aid of colorist Frank D’Armata. It was March 2020 when the creative team of Pacheco, Perez, and D’Armata first started working with Jess. Their weird, hugely entertaining run on the series wraps with an issue-length fight that ends up being WAY more fun than it honestly has any right to be.
Jess just walked out of her front door. Now she finds herself facing a massive team of enemies. She doesn’t recognize all of them, but they all hate her. She was just getting ready to relax, and now she’s got to square off against nearly everyone that she’d managed to upset throughout the past couple of years or more. She’s not going to have to face them alone, though. She has the aid of her babysitter and a dinosaur with Gatling guns for arms. So it’s going to get weird, but this is Marvel Manhattan. Anything could happen.
An issue-length fight sequence is a bit of a strange way for a two-year journey to end, particularly as Karla Pacheco is ending it. Pacheco has such a wide range of comedy, drama, and action and a hell of a lot to resolve if she’s going to make the ending satisfying. Surprisingly enough, she actually manages to pull it off. The fight sequence in question has more than enough bizarre humor to turn an issue-long slugfest into a party that celebrates every weird thing that’s gone on in 22 issues.
Pacheco knows who she’s working with in Perez. Perez knows how to put together a fight sequence that works. There is some gorgeous panel layout, some of which feels like genius. The second and third pages have Jessica fighting for her life while perched atop one of the skewed panels of the next row. (Everyone is so eager to beat the hell out of Jessica that they’re causing the panels to tumble over.)Elsewhere the action tiles out on panels that rest atop a very smartly-drafted architectural rendering of the block of Jess’ home. It’s inventively-conceived action with everything shooting across the page in clever angles.
A comic book series in the current era doesn’t run for two years with the same core creative team if there isn’t a hell of a lot of love going on. The issue closes with a farewell to Spider-Woman with closing remarks from the writer, artist, colorist, letterer, and editor. And...y’know...it’s been really, really fun reviewing the comic book for the past couple of years as well. It’s been one of the most reliably good titles on the comics rack for the past couple of years. It’s a shame to see it come to a close.
