Spider-Woman 50th Anniversary Special #1 // Review
Different characters come from different inspirations. Jessica Drew came from the same place that Jennifer Walters did. Stan Lee was concerned that someone else would try to do a Spider-WOMAN character as Marvel didn’t have one. So they rushed to create a character and get her onto the comic book rack as quickly as possible. 50 years later, she’s still here and still one of the more fascinating and under-used characters in the Marvel Universe. Marvel celebrates her 50th anniversary with a big one-shot celebration with two features: one written by Marvel veteran Ann Nocenti and another by Dan Watters. Artist on the book are Stefano Raffaele and Andrea Broccardo. Colorists are Neeraj Menon and Mattia Iacono.
Jess is fighting the Flying Tiger. In a pool. On a rooftop. While people are more or less oblivious to it. So it's weird to make matters more weird, she really should be keeping track of her friend someone she just struck up a friendship with she's doing something dangerous. I swear, she is being contacted about somebody from his past. A research scientist who used to work at Wundagore. Some things you just can't escape. She is the best person to have to deal with the monster of this particular doctor has become.
Nocenti plays an interesting game with traditional, super hero concepts. All too often can't rest between the life as a superhero and life as a civilian are played against love, interest, interests, and family, and things of that nature. Nocenti play it a lot more casually. In Jess’ line of work it IS difficult to maintain casual friendships. And so she has to balance this friendship against work as a superhero. It's clever stuff that doesn't completely be rewrite the rules. It's just a really nice half of a double sized tissue with Jess. Watters’ feature is a more traditional web-slinger-like superhero story involving scientist transformed his own research. Typical monster stuff. It does, however, launch things into a whole direction for Jess.
Raffaele’s work might kill a little bit stiff in places. However, there's an overall appeal to the way that he comes across on the page. And there are quite a few captivating angles of the action has hit him. However, the deeper end of the drama is never quite draw onto the page all that well. Broccardo’s work in the second feature has a bit more of a dramatic impact. The sharp line work. The vertiginous perspectives of some of the animals. It all feels very well-rendered.
And although the basic premise that launches into her own series this time around originality, that's never really been a problem for her before. She's got much more of a unique personality and individuality as witnessed by the way she's been brought to the page over the years. Origins may have been a shallow attempting to ensure that she was going to be able to be owned by Marvel, but she's been able to carve out it very distinctive space for herself. There's no questioning that she'll be able to find her personality in the new series.
