A little understanding goes a long way.
Creative Staff:
Story: Dennis Hopeless
Art: Javier Rodriguez, Alvaro Lopez
What They Say:
A knockdown drag-out bout between Spider-Woman and a dangerous new foe…Lady Caterpillar! Plus, Spider-Woman’s first joint-investigation with Ben Urich comes to a close!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The first arc for the new Jessica Drew comes to a close with this installment and it’s one that largely sets up how things are going to go with the book, at least in the short term. That’s not a bad thing as Jessica definitely fits in well with the street level side and I’m hopeful for some engaging stories with it since there’s a lot of territory that can be covered. The flip side is that I hope we don’t get stuck with a lot of low level punk villains that aren’t worth the ink they’re printed with, because that just makes it all seem not worthwhile. This installment spent a lot of time with these bottom feeders that are struggling for a variety of reasons to be villains, and there’s potential to work something there, but mostly they’re the joke villains and I’m hard pressed to spend four bucks a month on that, even for Jess.
With this installment, we get the fallout from her discovery of where all the significant others and families have ended up that the villains du jour have been blackmailed into stealing for. That they’re all leading seemingly normal lives is unusual at first, but basically we get the reveal that they’re all victims of domestic violence; both physical and emotional. That hits Jess hard to be sure and she’s certainly not a person without compassion, but before she can really figure it all out and what’s been going on, she ends up getting whacked hard by Cat, who has taken her ex’s exo-suit construction thing and starts going to town on her. That she gets taken down pretty hard is no surprise since it’s a quick attack with some strength to it, but also because it’s not something she wants to fight back on directly since Cat’s basically going all Ripley on her and there’s good reason for it.
Which is what we get with her extended flashback to the time before she went and set all this up with others and provided a place for others experiencing similar kinds of domestic violence from their significant others. While we’ve seen a number of villains over the years that are good guys trying to do the right thing in bad ways, there’s also plenty of them that are just plain bad and rotten. Their circumstances are things that need to be explored as well, but that’s been a staple of the junk level villain for a long time so it doesn’t exactly belong here. Cat’s story is one that you can easily imagine fitting into this world and being exacerbated by partners who are several orders more powerful than normal because of access to equipment or powers they gain, so a situation like this where they’re all out hiding makes a lot of sense. Even if they go about it the wrong way from a top level kind of view.
In Summary:
Jess’ involvement in all of this plays out well overall as she gets to do some decent action moments, take a few hits along the way, and get help from others who realize that Cat is basically gone over the edge to protect everyone. There’s a lot of standard and real world domestic violence issues that plays into it and it does at times feel a bit forced, where you expect that special message at the end about how to get help. It is the kind of thing that Jess would get involved in righting, which is why she left the Avengers and wanted to forge her own path. One that’s now aligned with Urich’s, as she realizes what it is he’s trying to do and how she was overlooking the obvious path to follow. It’s a decent and solid piece, but one I hope becomes more engaging in the depth and scale of the story.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: June 3rd, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
