A curious little plan.
Creative Staff:
Story: Dennis Hopeless
Art: Javier Rodriguez, Alvaro Lopez
What They Say:
Jessica Drew, A.K.A. Spider-Woman, gets closer to figuring out who has been kidnapping villains’ significant others to blackmail the villains!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With the way Spider-Woman as a series has gone, it’s been a bit mixed overall. With it starting amid the Spider-Verse arc, it took a bit to get familiar with Jessica again and then when we finally got done with it, she moved on from everything that had been a part of her life for several years. That works as a nice clean break for new readers and allowed her to get back to her roots in a sense. Moving forward from there, it was good to see her working with Ben Urich again as he ended up with a case she just couldn’t resist, even though it gave us a lot of D-List characters that weren’t going to be modernized and made competent. But what it did was humanize them and lead us into a twisty and odd case for Jessica.
That case had her doing probably one of the least liked things of her career by taking over for Porcupine for awhile and allowing herself to be captured, roughed up and interrogated by the person running this whole scam on the various low level villains. With it being revealed that they have their significant others or children threatened, it’s easy to understand that they’d fall into old habits and routines to protect them, especially since some do like those old routines. Jessica’s time in the costume doesn’t go quite as planned at first as she ends up being hauled into a safe room and hung from her wrists where she’s questioned about what she’s done. But she’s also just left there when she doesn’t answer, since that would give away the gig. Of course, Jessica’s got that all part of the plan, which is revealed in good fun a bit later in showing her escape in wonderful old school fashion.
What she discovers, after doing some investigative work though, is something that’s rather interesting. Discovering that many of the significant others are essentially living normal lives in upstate New York, safely away from the problem men in their lives, has it like a witness protection program of sorts. There’s some interesting bits as they rattle off their relationship, and as Jessica conceals her identity with a bit of help, but it has a light touch to it all overall as she figures out more and more of what’s going on here. Not that it’s entirely safe as there’s a real trick to it all, and there’s even an aspect of danger that comes into play as it turns out Ben and Roger have largely walked into a trap all too easily. But it sets the stake for what should be the end of the arc next issue.
In Summary:
Spider-Woman moves this arc along well here and it is fun to see her out of the city, in a variety of outfits and getting the job done by doing basic investigative work. There’s a good ease to her personality that makes all of this quite functional and enjoyable to read. It’s not a deep story, but it’s one that looks at an area of the low level villains and their lives that we get once in awhile and plays with it in a good way and with a twist or two to it that keeps the reader on their toes. The team continues to portray Jess well and I like who they’ve drawn into it overall, and the light atmosphere to it is welcome after all the world ending things that have gone on for her. But I also hope for things to get a little more serious too.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: May 6th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
