Bring Me Spider-Woman!

Valerie Cooper, a member of the Commission on Superhuman Affairs has contacted Avengers Compound and is demanding the team’s assistance in capturing Spider-Woman. Answering the call is Iron Man, who learns that Spider-Woman is wanted after she helped the Avengers break out of the Vault, during their recent legal troubles.[1] Recalling how the government sent the Freedom Force after both teams of Avengers and put them on trail for crimes they never committed, Iron Man is furious that Cooper would have the never to ask for their help capturing one of their rogue operatives.[2]

Cooper explains that the alternative is sending Freedom Force to get her, and they might not be rough with her after her betrayal. She tells Iron Man if he convinces her to come in willingly, her punishment will be more lenient. Iron Man decides to consider it, but is warned to make up his mind as there is also a bounty on Spider-Woman’s head.

Meanwhile, in a hidden lab below Denver, Colorado, a trio of armored mercenaries called the Seekers are preparing to go out looking for Spider-Woman by testing their equipment. Between Grasp’s electro-gauntlets, Chain’s power-shackle, and Sonic’s sound cannon they consider Spider-Woman as good as caught.[3]

Elsewhere in Denver, Julia Carpenter — aka Spider-Woman — goes to a payphone so she can call her daughter and check on how she is doing. Rachel is deeply upset that her mother hasn’t come home. The conversation is interrupted by Julia’s ex-husband, Larry, who is annoyed that she is absent all the time with no explanation and threatens to take full custody of their daughter unless she straightens up her act. Just then, the cable on a nearby construction crane snaps, causing steel girders to fall toward the busy street below. Seeing this, Julia compromises herself by using her spider-powers to leap up and catch the girders in mid-air and save lives. Fleeing the scene, she runs into some police officers and is forced to use her psi-webs to entangle them while she gets away. In all the commotion, an informant for the Seekers hangs up on Julia’s husband and uses the payphone to tip them off to Spider-Woman’s current location.

Back at Avengers Compound, Iron Man is still pondering how to deal with the Spider-Woman situation when Hawkeye asks him what he is thinking about. Telling Clint about his conversation with Val Cooper, Hawkeye suggests that Iron Man help her out as best he can. Iron Man decides to act on this and flies to Colorado to look for her. Arriving at the scene of her latest sighting, the Avenger is able to pick up the residual energy traces of her psi-webs and begins using that to track down her location.

By this time, Julia has changed into costume and fled to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains to try and figure out her next move. She is found by Iron Man in moments and convinces her that he has come to help her out. Passing along Val Cooper’s message, Iron Man hears about how Spider-Woman regrets becoming a government operative in Freedom Force because the secretive nature of her work has put an incredible strain on her family lie as she has not been able to explain her frequent absences. When Spider-Woman asks Iron Man to help her establish a fake identity so she can take her child and run, he agrees to help and takes off to make arrangements, promising to be back in a few hours.

While he is gone, Spider-Woman is found by the Seekers who were able to track her the same way Iron Man did earlier. Julia tries to hold her own, but the Seekers high tech weapons are too much for her. Luckily, Iron Man has doubled back and assists her in battle. The Seekers are more than happy to fight Iron Man as well, since they are former members of Advance Idea Mechanics that have a bone to pick with the Avenger.[4] Working together, Iron Man and Spider-Woman defeat the Seekers and strip them of their armor before sending them packing. Retreating to an abandoned hunting cabin, Iron Man explains that the reason why he came back was because he had second thoughts and believes that the best thing for Spider-Woman to do is surrender as running away from her problems will only make things worse.

Although she has her reservations, Spider-Woman asks for Iron Man to help her see her daughter one last time before surrendering. Iron Man agrees to help and lends her his cloaking device so she can slip past the surveillance being done on her ex-husband’s apartment. Checking on Rachel, Spider-Woman is upset when her daughter cries out for her mother in her sleep. For a brief moment, she considers taking Rachel and running but realizes that Iron Man was right, as painful as it is, being on the run will only make life worse for her daughter.

Fifteen hours later, Spider-Woman is in Washington, DC, where she is chewed out by Valerie Cooper for her insubordination. However, rather than tossing her in the Vault for 15 to 20 years, Cooper instead decides that Spider-Woman can better serve her time working on highly secret missions. This deeply upset Julia as this will continue preventing her from seeing her daughter. However, with no other options, Spider-Woman grudgingly accepts. She is then introduced to her new handler, a man named Mike Clemson, little knowing that he has a vendetta against Spider-Woman and this will give him the perfect opportunity to have his revenge.[5]

Recurring Characters

Iron Man, Spider-Woman, Seekers (Chain, Sonic, Grasp), Hawkeye, Rachel Carpenter, Larry Carpenter, Mike Clemson, Val Cooper,

Continuity Notes

1. Both teams of Avengers were betrayed by their former teammate Quicksilver and put on trial by the CSA. They broke out of the Vault thanks to the help of Spider-Woman and eventually cleared their names. See Avengers Annual #15 and West Coast Avengers Annual #1.

2. Here, Iron Man recounts that Freedom Force is mostly comprised of former members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Indeed, most of them were part of Mystique’s incarnation of the group first formed in X-Men #141. Due to growing anti-mutant hysteria, Mystique convinced the government into granting her group amnesty if they agreed to become government operatives. See Uncanny X-Men #199.

3. The Seeker’s real names are not given here. They are Thomas (Chain), Daniel (Sonic), and Herb (Grasp) Bannion as revealed in Fantastic Four #342.

4. This is because Iron Man had been interfering with the work of AIM in Iron Man #201, and 203-208.

5. This story teases that answers will be revealed in an upcoming Spider-Woman limited series. However, that series was delayed by about six years and the connection between Spider-Woman and Clemson is not revealed until then. In Spider-Woman (vol. 2) #1-4 it is revealed that Clemson was in love with Julia’s mother, Elizabeth Wesselman and was pissed when she married Julia’s father, Walter Cromwell instead of him. Julia will be forced to work with Clemson until she quits the commission and joins the Avengers in Avengers West Coast #74.

Topical References

• When Spider-Woman shows Iron Man a photo of her daughter, Rachel is depicted wearing Mickey Mouse ears. This would not be considered topical since Marvel is now owned by Disney.