In my opinion, Spider-Woman was always a fucking mess. The character was created because Stan Lee feared that someone would make female versions of Marvel’s popular heroes and own the trademarks. So he went out of his way to create She-Hulk, and had Marv Wolfman create Spider-Woman. Spider-Woman first appeared in Marvel Spotlight #32 and was an instant hit. After a few appearances in Marvel Two-In-One, the character was given her own title.

Wolfman worked with comics legend Carmine Infantino for the first 8 issues. Spider-Woman’s origin was that she was one of the High Evolutionary’s New Men and evolved from an actual spider. This idea was fucking stupid so they changed it. Instead, Jessica Drew was a woman given the powers of a spider by the High Evolutionary. They also tied in mysticism by giving her Morgan le Fay as a primary foe and had her palling around with a magician named Magnus.

The first arc had Spider-Woman trying to find her long-lost father a story arc that did not ave a very fulfilling ending. Wolfman left the title and it was given to Mark Gruenwald. Gruenwald created a bunch of odd ball villains for Spider-Woman to fight but her stories were sorely lacking. Her lack of human connections (that being reduced to Magnus and her love interest Jerry Hunt. There were cults and living dolls, and blah blah blah.

Then Michael Fleisher took over as writer and completely changed gears. With a promised explanation that was never provided, Spider-Woman instead became a bounty hunter and a disabled sidekick named Scotty McDowell. McDowell’s addition to the cast was insufferable since e became a one dimension unrequited lover. One good thing, at least, was that he continued to work on Lindsay McCabe, a female supporting character who befriended Jessica during Gruenwald’s run. But Fleisher’s run was shit. In fact it was all shit. Shit shit shit. I cannot express how painful it is reading these old Spider-Woman stories. Still the series continued on into the 80s and you’ll have to go there to hear me bitch about how bad I thought this series was.

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