Spider-Woman in the 2010s

Or How a Bubble Butt Broke the Internet

In the previous decade Spider-Woman saw a bit of a come back. Thanks to Brian Michael Bendis and his love for the original Spider-Woman, Jessica Drew was back. She mostly appeared in various Avengers books and, unfortunately, an ongoing Spider-Woman series was hard to come by. Even when Bendis was given his own Spider-Woman series to write, it didn’t last very long.

In the 2010s Marvel was really trying to push for more diverse brands to attract anyone other than white male readers. This was a decade where they were pushing stories that featured new and pre-existing female characters. You had Captain Marvel, the new Ms. Marvel, even fucking Squirrel Girl was given her own series. The point is, Marvel was seriously tapping into a demographic that was usually just an afterthought: women.

Now, I would say that Marvel, while not perfect, has usually been pretty good at being inclusive except for when it came to women. I’d say that the representation of women in comics has been tepid at the best of times and comics had a long way to go before women really got a decent voice.

At any rate, it looked like Marvel was finally starting to do the right thing until it was announced that there was going to be a new Spider-Woman series about to be launched.

This was applauded until female fans got a look at a variant cover of the first issue painted by legendary artist Milo Manara. You might remember it. If you don’t take a gander:

The reaction was not positive. Female fans of comics, particularly those who identify as feminists were deeply upset. They complained that this painting deeply sexualized the character, particularly since the focus appeared to be on Jessica Drew’s big ol’ butt. It was decried as hyper-sexualization of a female character and, at it’s worst, it was accused of body-shaming, suggesting that it would make female readers ashamed of their bodies. It sparked a lot of bickering back and forth by male and female comic book fans over what was acceptable.

On the one hand, I agree with some of the defenses for this piece of work: The female form isn’t the only one that is depicted like this. I should point out to you that male superheroes are always depicted as in fit form with big muscles. All super-heroes are basically drawn “never-nude” in tights that leave little to the imagination. Even the internet personality and self-proclaimed genius Maddox chimed in to point out the apparent double-standards on display in comics:

That all said, I don’t really know if it’s my place to comment on it. I mean, I’ve read comic books my entire life and I never stopped to think about how male super-heroes were always depicted as muscular and fit. I mean, the way I’ve always thought about it is that a super-hero needs to be fit in order to fight crime. It kinds of makes sense. At the same time, so would female super-heroes. However, I can see where the women are coming from with this one because it’s mostly male artists depicting female characters and even now a lot of male artists draw their female characters to be somewhat titillating. Female super-heroes up to this point were almost always drawn as a straight male artist’s idea of a 10.

Anyway, I’ve never had to grow up thinking that society wanted me to look a certain way and I’ve never really experienced body shaming on a level where a fictional character makes me feel bad about my appearance. That’s not my experience so it’s not really my position to tell you how to feel.

However, if I were to look at this situation from a strictly clinical point of view: People freaked the fuck out about a whole lot of nothing. This artwork was part of the internet outrage machine for a few months before going away. It’s actually kind of funny how big of a deal this was because the Milo Manara cover was a variant cover. Meaning you didn’t have to buy it if you didn’t want to, there were other versions of the same comic without this apparently upsetting cover.

Soon, when the controversy died down, and while things have gotten a bit better, they are far from perfect. Looking back on it now, it seems almost quaint that people got this upset over a painting of someone’s butt. That all said, in retrospect, perhaps it did have an impact in the end. Anyway, enough about that one cover for now, let’s talk about this series.

The 5th volume of Spider-Woman came out around the time of the Spider-Verse event and, as a result, the first four issues were devoted to that. It was pretty much like any other Spider-Woman story of the last decade: They didn’t think that Spider-Woman could carry herself so they had to have another franchise character prop her up. Usually, this was the Avengers, but this time around it was Spider-Man. This was an interesting move in that, until now, the worlds of Spider-Woman and Spider-Man were only related by the spider-motif and little else.

I think this was because writers wanted to make Spider-Woman into something that just wasn’t a derivative of her male counterpart, even though her inception was rooted in simply protecting Marvel’s rights to a gender-swapped spider-character. Not only did Spider-Woman have unique powers that set her aside from Spider-Man, she also came from a different world that had vastly different supporting casts, a vastly different rogues gallery, and a totally different tone to her book altogether.

With this volume, writer Dennis Hopeless took a different approach. The spider-office decided to finally make Spider-Woman a little more closely related to her male counterpart. I think this sudden association was to prop up Spider-Woman so she could get a good run at going in her own direction afterward.

After Spider-Verse was over, Hopeless and artist Javier Rodriguez took Spider-Woman in a new, but somewhat familiar grounds. They severed her ties with the Avengers, changed her costume, and put her on the road. She wasn’t wearing spandex and was out trying to help average people. This was somewhat reminiscent of the Spider-Woman of the early 80s when she was a private eye. However, there were some differences. Back in those days, the stories were kind of dark and brooding. The departure here was that Hopeless did what no other writer did before him: made Spider-Woman fun. Her character could be funny and do goofy things without being a gender-swapped version of Spider-Man. She could have her own voice and have unique adventures and still be a fun, light read. Most importantly, she could do that without being propped up by the Avengers or Spider-Man.

However, like many Marvel books that debuted in this period of time, the series only had a small run before being canceled when Secret Wars 2015 came around. This led to an abrupt end to the title, but the book would return with a 6th volume right after and continue where Hopeless and Rodriguez left off.

This time, however, they learned from the mistakes from the beginning of the 5th volume. For better or worse, the debacle created by the variant cover controversy was not going to be repeated. This time around, the first issue of Spider-Woman had a very different cover for fans, one featuring a very pregnant Spider-Woman on the cover.

Having Spider-Woman become a mother vastly changed the character and pivoted her into a whole new set of scenarios and experiences. The character has seen a new surge of popularity and at the time of this writing, she still has a regular on-going title. Perhaps this is a new age where Spider-Woman can carry herself on her own like the strong female protagonist she always has been. However, only time will tell and that is a story for another time.