Showing posts with label Spider-Woman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spider-Woman. Show all posts

Tuesday, 1 January 2013

What other Essentials has Spider-Man appeared in?

Happy New Year everyone!

Next month will see the release of the next Spider-Man volume - Essential Marvel Team-Up volume 4, containing issues #76-#78, #80-#98 & Annuals #2-#3. I'll be reviewing the volume in due course and also adding my thoughts on issue #79, which has been omitted due to rights issues.

In the meantime, this post is response to another enquiry about a minor aspect of the Essentials, namely which volumes from other series include issues from the various Spider-Man titles. I've already covered the issues not yet reached by their own volumes, but for the sake of completism here is a full list of all the volumes that contain any issues from the various Spider-Man series. The individual issues are linked to the posts containing the relevant reviews and the relevant volume links are to those reviews. As ever the co-stars of Marvel Team-Up issues are identified:

Essential Classic X-Men volume 3
Both issues come from after the X-Men's original series was cancelled and replaced by a reprint run. The Amazing issue would appear to be the first significant appearance of any of the X-Men post-cancellation.

Essential Werewolf by Night volume 1
This was one of the earliest Marvel forays into traditional horror following reforms to the Comics Code Authority in the early 1970s. As with so many other Marvel characters, the Werewolf popped up across the Marvel universe and invariably met with Spider-Man.





Essential Punisher volume 1
As noted previously, Essential Punisher volume 1 is an odd entry in the series as it collects the character's earliest appearances from multiple series rather than concentrating solely on his own titles. However it's not the only Essential volume out there to take such an approach...

Essential Marvel Horror volume 2
Essential Marvel Horror is one of the more unusual of the Essential series as it collects stories based around the various horror-based characters, mostly from the various anthology series, rather than a chronological run of an individual series. Volume 2 brings together stories featuring the likes of the Living Mummy, Gabriel the Devil Hunter, Brother Boodoo, Golem, Scarecrow and Modred the Mystic. Note that the stories in the Marvel Horror volumes are not always in chronological order...

Essential Marvel Horror volume 1
...hence Volume 1 appearing on this list after Volume 2. The first volume carries stories featuring either Daimon Hellstrom, the Son of Satan, or his sister Satana. (I am astounded that Marvel was able to get away with using the name "Satan" in the titles of any of its series in the 1970s.)

Essential Defenders volume 2
Although the Defenders are famous for their "non-team" status, some characters were more Defenders than others and all three of the above guest-stars fall into this category.

Essential Killraven volume 1
This is one of the odder series Marvel has ever put out. Having obtained the comic rights to H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, Marvel created a sequel series set in a post-invasion apocalypse future in which the protagonist was a freedom fighter battling against the Martians. Whilst time travelling back from the 17th century Spider-Man accidentally wound up in the era and teamed up with Killraven.

Essential Marvel Two-in-One volume 1
This was half of the first ever crossover between any of Spider-Man's titles and another series, bringing the stars of the two main rotating team-up books together. It's a pity there was never a crossover with Super-Villain Team-Up to round things out.

Essential Warlock volume 1
Following the cancellation of Warlock's own series (for the second time) his story was partially continued in this issue of Marvel Team-Up. The climax then came in a two-part story run in Avengers Annual #7 and Marvel Two-in-One Annual #2. The latter part saw Spider-Man show up to help save the day, and it is discussed in my second post on guest appearances.

Essential Nova volume 1
As previously discussed, this was the first crossover between Amazing and another series, bringing together Marvel's biggest star and their newest (and the Nova issue also appears in Essential Spider-Man volume 8). Looking back it's astounding to think that Nova was seriously expected to be the next Spider-Man. But then predicting The Next Big Thing has never been an easy science.

Essential Iron Fist volume 1
I believe the latter issue is the first time "the Daughters of the Dragon" were billed under that name. More normally they were part of Iron Fist's supporting cast.

Essential Man-Thing volume 2
The title of this volume makes many people laugh but back in the 1970s Marvel actually went one further and produced a comic with the title Giant-Size Man-Thing. How on earth did that one ever get past the Comics Code Authority? (And yes, every issue was printed with the CCA seal of approval.)

Essential Moon Knight volume 1
(Contrary to some early reports and many online listings, Marvel Team-Up Annual #4 is not included.)

Similar to the Punisher, Moon Knight began life as a one-off villain in another series (in this case Werewolf by Night) but proved so popular he kept returning and eventually graduated to a series of his own. His encounter with Spider-Man came midway through this journey.


Essential Dazzler volume 1
Dazzler was being steadily built up to be one of the Next Big Things from Marvel as part of a wider tie-in with a record company, but for various reasons the tie-ins were cancelled before they could happen and her actual series didn't materialise until 1981 when the disco fad was already fading. But before then one of her earliest appearances was in Amazing Spider-Man, an issue which ends rather suggestively between Spidey and Dazzler but unfortunately this was never followed up on.


Essential Spider-Woman volume 2
Well okay Spider-Man himself doesn't actually appear in this issue, one of the few of the later Marvel Team-Ups without him, but I've included it for completism's sake and in any case Spider-Woman does.

Essential Defenders volume 5
Once again these are team-ups with some of the more regular members of the Defenders in this era.

Essential Defenders volume 6
...and yet again we get a team-up with one of the main Defenders.

Essential Ghost Rider volume 4
Notably Ghost Rider himself doesn't actually appear in this issue, but instead we get Zarathos, the spirit previously bonded to him. This issue was also a crossover with Secret Wars II.




And so that's all the volumes I'm aware of. Unsurprisingly the vast majority of volumes reprint issues from Marvel Team-Up due to the policy of collecting some significant appearances of characters alongside their own series. However Essential Punisher volume 1 balances out the numbers somewhat.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Friday, 6 July 2012

Essential Spider-Woman volume 2

Next comes Essential Spider-Woman volume 2, which reprints Spider-Woman #26-50, Marvel Team-Up #97 and Uncanny X-Men #148. This sees the conclusion of the title and this particular Spider-Woman wouldn’t have another for over twenty years. (There would be other Spider-Women in the meantime but they’re now mainly forgotten.)

These issues see the rest of Michael Fleisher’s run, followed by a run by Chris Claremont (who also writes the X-Men issue) and finally a brief run by Ann Nocenti. There’s also a fill-in by J.M. DeMatteis, whilst the Team-Up is by Steven Grant. The art sees runs by Steve Leialoha and Brian Postman, with fill-ins by Jerry Bingham and Ernie Chan. The Team-Up issue is drawn by Carmine Infantino, whilst the X-Men issue is done by Dave Cockrum.

The Team-Up issue, which hasn’t yet been reached by Essential Marvel Team-Up, is a rare one without Spider-Man and instead headlines the Hulk, no doubt because of his TV series. It’s an odd inclusion here as it doesn’t contribute anything to Spider-Woman’s own series and instead just sees her and the Hulk fighting a mad scientist and his monstrous creations in a remote desert town. The X-Men issue’s claim to be here is more arguable because it’s the aftermath of a storyline in Spider-Woman’s own title that sees the X-Men guest-starring for the final battle, but whilst the issue completes the introduction of Siryn it again adds nothing to Spider-Woman, being just another guest appearance and a fight, and could have been equally left out. After all it also guest stars the Dazzler but hasn't been included in her Essentials. The most surprising omission is of Avengers #240-241 which served as an epilogue to the series, undoing much of the conclusion and ending things on a more positive note and putting Jessica Drew into the status quo she’d have for another two decades until the New Avengers came along. Had that been included then the initial story of Spider-Woman could have been told completely across these two volumes. Instead we get the main series itself and it’s really quite appropriate that the series ends with Magnus wiping all trace of Spider-Woman’s existence from everyone’s memory, making it as though she never existed. Because frankly the series is still as forgettable as ever.

Part of the problem is the turnover of writers, with few lasting long enough to make many developments last. Instead, each writer seems to rapidly alter the status quo from their predecessor. So we have Spider-Woman working as a bounty hunter in Los Angeles, followed by Jessica Drew working as a private investigator in San Francisco with Spider-Woman working to enhance the service, and finally the last few issues see a temporary return to Los Angeles followed by what appears to be a rapid dismantling of her San Francisco life in favour of something different when suddenly a final crisis emerges from nowhere and ends it all – for now. To add to the mess we also get changing of the handling of Jessica’s physiognomy and powers – at one point she ditches the drugs to suppress her negative pheromone problem and for most of the rest of the run people don’t find her unsettling – until another writer comes along and briefly uses that aspect. Her powers fluctuate quite a bit, particularly her capacity to recharge and store her electric venom bolts, whilst at times she has super hearing and other times not. (And she apparently lost her power of immunity in an appearance in Marvel Two-in-One that isn’t included here; not that the series itself notices.) And of top of it all the bounty hunter set-up was just dropped into the title back in issue #21 in the first volume, with a promise that a future story would reveal how the set-up came about. That promise is never delivered on. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that this title was still being produced solely to secure the intellectual property. Were writers forced onto the title as a contractual obligation? Several of the writers have won huge accolades for their work elsewhere, but there’s little here that soars to such heights. However Steve Leialoha’s art is extremely good, and his longevity on the title (drawing all but two issues in a twenty-two issue run – well that’s epic compared to everyone else) suggests he actually wanted to be there. However Brian Postman’s work on the last four issues does little for me, although there are signs towards the end that had both he and the book lasted longer he would have improved.

The inconsistency is also present in the situations Spider-Woman goes through, but this is a feature common within writers’ runs as well as between them. Is Spider-Woman a series about a costumed crime fighter like Spider-Man or Daredevil, an espionage/world conqueror series like Captain America, a magic and myth series like Thor, or a science fiction/fantasy series like the Fantastic Four? Elements from all of these sub-genres pop up over the course of these issues with the result that Spider-Woman can go from fighting Hydra in one issue to having to cope with the Impossible Man in the very next. Whilst some books can effective juggle a wide variety of scenarios and problems, most are at their best when they decide early on just what sort of series they’re going to be and broadly stick to that. Here it feels like the series is going through all manner of situations and menaces without much great reason, adding to the disjointed nature of the work.

That’s not to say there aren’t some individual stories that work reasonably well on their own. The volume kicks off with an epic focused on the twin troubles of the return of the Enforcer, albeit now as a generic supervillain with a gag, and the manipulations of the press. Issue #26 introduces us to a particularly odious character, the new publisher of the Los Angeles Courier, once a highly respected newspaper but since its take-over by a publisher from the UK it’s become a rather trashy rag. He and his reporters also resort to rather dubious methods to obtain stories, including a willingness to break the law. His name is “Rupert M. Dockery”. Now I wonder who he’s a parody of?! It’s a reminder that even thirty years ago Rupert Murdoch’s approach to journalism had its critics. I’m writing this at a time when in the real world the Murdoch empire is taking a battering, starting with revelations about the way reporters on one of his papers obtained stories through illegal and immoral methods, but the revelations have gone much deeper. So it’s amazing to see such a blatant parody of him engaging in equivalent activities such as arranging for the creation of a supervillain to fight Spider-Woman and then contriving the Enforcer’s escape from prison in order to generate exclusive news stories his papers and television stations will have coverage of. Curiously few people realise what’s going on until a visiting Spider-Man spots the coincidence and follows up the lead. (Now what profession does Jessica subsequently go into again?) But Dockery gets his final comeuppance when Spider-Woman and Captain Walsh obtain a confession and since it’s not enough to convict they force him out of the city’s media. This parody is over thirty years old but it’s still recognisable to those day.

The same storyline sees Spider-Woman’s ally, Scott McDowell, try to save her from the Enforcer and instead winds up wounded by a poison dart and in suspended animation, with Spider-Woman blackmailed by the Enforcer into aiding him so she can obtain the cure for Scott. It’s good to see that both Spider-Woman and Scott care for each other to go to such lengths, but not enough is made of Spider-Woman’s moral dilemma over the situation. It would have been more credible to show her resisting at fist and trying to find an antidote independently below reluctantly accepting the situation. It’s also a sign of her gullibility that she accepts the Enforcer actually has an antidote – when captured he admits he doesn’t. The story also brings in a return guest appearance by Spider-Man, and both spiders have now discovered each other’s name. It takes his intervention to break the chain of the Enforcer’s hold but it could have been achieved by Captain Walsh or another character so this does feel like a more gratuitous guest appearance than is necessary. The narrative doesn’t end there but flows into the next tale as Spider-Woman fights the Fly, a minor Spider-Man villain, and Dr Malus, one of a number of scientists who stay on the sidelines helping the supervillain community. Malus, it turns out, invented the dart and cures Scott – but also injects him with a drug that changes him into a new villain, the Hornet.

Over the years there’s been a lot of discussion about the treatment of women in comics and whether they specifically get a raw deal because of their gender or if it’s just the curse of being major spin-off or supporting characters. Much of this debate stems from the Women in Refrigerators website. I’ll come to Spider-Woman’s fate later, but the treatment of Scott could be held up as a case for the argument that it’s really about putting supporting characters through the wringer. The character is confined to a wheelchair due to a past incident but now serves as an information support resource – a decade or so before DC’s Oracle. When he tries to rescue his partner he winds up very much in the damsel in distress role, held hostage to manipulate the hero, and he’s even stored in a refrigerator! Then he gets turned against his will into a monstrous form to fight the hero, similar to Alicia Masters in the Marvel Two-in-One issues reprinted in volume one. And the Hornet particularly brings out a lot of male stereotyping as he’s written as a very macho, sexist man, with Malus’s drugs massively boosting Scott’s testosterone levels. However he’s ultimately cured quite easily – just a week’s rest in which the drugs are naturally purged from his system. I guess it became clear quite quickly that Hornet didn’t have much ongoing potential as a recurring villain.

This is still a big problem for the series, and the relocation to San Francisco doesn’t solve it. Most of the villains in this volume are either imports from other Marvel series who don’t have a direct connection to Spider-Woman, or they’re forgettable localised creations or both. As well as the Enforcer, Hornet and Dr Malus we also get Turner D. Century, Hammer an’ Anvil, Angar the Screamer, the Juggernaut and Black Tom Cassidy, Deathstroke and his Terminators (appearing very soon after Deathstroke the Terminator debuted in DC’s New Teen Titans – I assume this was a coincidence), the Flying Tiger, the Silver Samurai, Cthon, Daddy Longlegs, the Gypsy Moth, Locksmith and Ticktock, as well as the forces of Hydra and various organised crime groups, plus a variety of non-costumed foes including crooked businessmen, corrupt small town officials and the like. The Kingpin shows up but on this occasion as the target to be saved rather than the criminal. Whilst there are a few big names on that list, they’re by and large only around for a single story to serve wider purposes. Otherwise the list is full of second stringers and one-offs. They may make for some good individual tales – Turner D. Century’s crusade to replace modern day “immorality” with traditional values from the 1900s makes for a strong tale about the dangers of taking refuge in an idealised past – but overall they add little value with few personalised rivalries built up. Even when villains from earlier in the series are brought back like the Enforcer or the Gypsy Moth they largely go through the motions rather than add anything particularly spectacular to the series.

The two main exceptions are Morgan le Fay and the Viper. Morgan le Fay pops up several times, and brings the revelation that Spider-Woman grew up near the influence of the demon Cthon and was believed to be a pawn of him, but it feels like a clumsy attempt to shoe-horn in an explanation for why an immortal sorceress is so interested in Spider-Woman. Morgan first tries to enlist Spider-Woman to her side but when rejected she swears vengeance. By virtue of her number of appearances and the level of the conflict Morgan le Fay is basically Spider-Woman’s archenemy but it’s an incredibly imbalanced conflict. Magical arch foes can work when the hero has a suitable power level and a background with myth and magic in it, but here it feels clumsy. The theme of Cthon’s influence also comes up in a multi-part story the Hydra, the Silver Samurai and the Viper. Here we get the revelation that the Viper arranged for Spider-Woman to be recruited into Hydra and she is in fact Jessica’s mother. Yes the mother who was supposed to have died when Spider-Woman’s origin was revised at the start of the series. That particular inconsistency isn’t really resolved here (although later on it would be retconned away) and instead we get a retcon just to reinforce the ties between Spider-Woman and Hydra; ties that have not really played much of a part in the series. And with this (#45) being Claremont’s penultimate issue the ties are swiftly forgotten again for the remainder of the run. I’m not sure what this revelation really adds to either character and once again it shows just how poorly established and developed Spider-Woman’s backstory is. The Cthon link is explored as it’s revealed that the demon has had the Viper as his slave for half a century, hoping to use her to escape from his realm but she proved flawed and so he now hopes to use her daughter. Again this is all mystical stuff that doesn’t really feel naturally connected to Spider-Woman’s more normal run of adventures.

Better handled are Spider-Woman’s supporting cast. By far the most prominent is Jessica’s best friend Lindsay McCabe who is about as close to a depiction of a lesbian as you can get in c1980 Marvel Comics. She sticks with Jessica through thick and thin, and works out her identity early on but doesn’t let on until after she’s been badly injured falling off a roof with the Viper and Jessica decides to confess up. Subsequently she gets involved in further adventures, including giving relationship guidance counselling to the Impossible Woman! (Another female spin-off because the Impossible Man wanted a mate. But neither of them understands relationships which just adds to the madness.) Unfortunately with changing writers she does get left on the side at times – in particular she’s absent from most of the early issues of this volume before a new writer and status quo comes along. Sadly for Lindsay, Jessica finds a boyfriend in San Francisco in the form of David Ishima, their landlord. David brings an early storyline when he discovers the building he’s working on is for a criminal organisation, but otherwise drifts onto the sidelines and it appears the next writer sets things up to ditch him altogether by having him unable to accept both sides of Jessica’s life. However because of the shortness of the run the actual break comes in the very last issue. The one other recurring character of note is Lieutenant Sabrina Morrell of the San Francisco police force who becomes a recurring reluctant ally and associate of both Spider-Woman and Jessica. Like a number of others she is sharp enough to work out the secret identity and she is also a member of the shadowy Yakuza organisation, a Japanese clan. In Claremont’s last issue the Yakuza are revealed as an organisation dedicated to protecting the powerless, whether inside the law or outside it. There is clearly more potential in the Yakuza but once again we get another change, the dropping of possibilities and characters and a new direction for the final few issues.

The last four issues are by Ann Nocenti and see the series wandering once more, almost literally with two of them taken up with a brief return to Los Angeles. Spider-Woman tackles a string of characters who are not bad but rather frustrated with aspects of their lives – a would-be dancer who’s too short until he fools with Giant-Man’s growth serum, the Gypsy Moth just seeking attention and affection, and a runaway boy with no control over psychic powers that cause chaotic destruction whenever he’s upset. All three, plus the guest starring Tigra and other foes are then captured by Locksmith, a former escape artist who saw audiences dwindle due to superheroes and so now captures them and imprisons them in specially designed cells, and his sidekick Ticktock who can foresee the near future. Spider-Woman saves the day halfway through the double-sized issue and we get a strange follow-up as she freely invites everyone to her home for a party, not even caring about her secret identity. Okay a lot of people have figures it out, but she’s hardly gone public with it and taking some former foes is really risky. The party sees her finally break up with David, wiping the slate clean then suddenly Magnus reappears in spirit form after having been completely absent for some four years. He reveals he’s a ghost who takes others’ forms and she’s never seen his real self – once again altering a character from what was see before. Morgan le Fay has been attacking Jessica with illusions but is based in the sixth century and Magnus explains they must astrally travel in time to defeat her, so Spider-Woman’s spirit form laves her body and goes back to do this. But on her return she finds her body dead, thanks to Morgan’s final act. Jessica faces death and asks Magnus to cast a final spell to wipe everyone’s memory of her. Then she walks off into the afterlife and the series ends.

My dislike for the magical elements of the series has been stated enough by now, so all I’ll say on this is that the universal mind wipe is a very easy plot device to remove all traces of the character and cut out loose ends so future writers wouldn’t have to worry about the series. But it brings different problems such as what happens to Spider-Woman’s body? How do all the party guests react to each other when they can’t remember who brought them there? What happens to all the other consequences of Spider-Woman’s actions? It’s bad enough to kill off a character with good potential just because her own series wasn’t selling well enough. But to try to make it as though she’d never existed is even worse. I don’t know if there were developments in corporate or intellectual property practices at the time so I have no idea if it was now the case that Spider-Woman was no longer needed. I suspect not as a new character using the name showed up a year later in Secret Wars – and she also appeared without a clearly defined backstory and set-up at outset. Had somebody realised that the character was a creative mess, with a backstory regularly revised and tied in umpteen knots, and decided that the only solution was to literally wipe the slate clean and start again with a new Spider-Woman? But whatever the reasons it’s a very poor way to end a character’s series, even if it was a pretty poor series anyway.

Of all the Essential volumes I’ve reviewed so far, the two Spider-Woman ones are by far the weakest, because of the ever changing set-ups and poor situations the character is put through. About the only clear idea that ever stuck was “Don’t make her too much of a female Spider-Man”. She’s to be credited for not being a more direct derivative of the male character, and the series understandably tried to avoid being an urban crime-adventure series like its counterparts. But when a core aim is to not be something and another is “be in print” it leaves a complete lack of defining principles and direction. As a result just about every writer brought their own take on the character and there’s little character and situation building across the series as a whole. The result is a massive missed opportunity. The character certainly had potential and interest, and in the right hands could have become a big hit for Marvel. Instead she seemed to be an assignment dumped on writers and it shows. “To know her is to fear her!” proclaimed the tagline on an early version of the logo, used on the volume’s cover (although none of the issues in here use it). I wonder if that reflected how many in Marvel felt at the time?
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Saturday, 30 June 2012

Essential Spider-Woman volume 1

We now come to Essential Spider-Woman volume 1, which reprints Marvel Spotlight #32, Marvel Two-in-One #29-33 and Spider-Woman #1-25. In addition there are Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entries for Spider-Woman and the Shroud, a pin-up of Spider-Woman and Carmine Infantino’s pencils for the unused cover to Spider-Woman #1.

As noted previously, Marvel Two-in-One was the Thing team-up book equivalent to Marvel Team-Up, although as the Thing had no solo title of his own there’s a greater emphasis on him here than Team-Up has on Spider-Man. Marvel Spotlight was one of a number of try-out titles to test new concepts on the market before launching them in their own title, as well as to secure trademarks.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Spider-Woman (like She-Hulk) was created primarily so that Marvel could secure the trademark on the name and copyright on the concept of a female version of their lead hero. The main concern were the plans by the Filmation animation company (best known to my generation for He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and She-Ra: Princess of Power) to create several original superheroes to appear in slots in a cartoon package hour. (This a concept that seems to be unique to the United States in that era. Basically, two or more cartoon characters share an hour-long slot which alternates between various shorts featuring either the banner characters or some of their supporting cast. This often makes it easy to combine new material with repeats. For both later repeats and the international market the cartoons are often depackaged back into their separate components.) This particular package would be Tarzan and the Super 7, following on from the success of The Batman/Tarzan Adventure Hour. On of the Super 7 slots was to be “Spider-Woman”, a woman with, you’ve guessed it, spider powers. Marvel reacted quickly to this and rapidly created their own “Spider-Woman”, filed the trademark and got her into print in order to secure it. Filmation’s creation became “Web Woman”. (Many thanks to Comic Book Resources: Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #28! for the details on this.) My understanding of US trademark law is limited, but in general companies can’t just sit on a trademark but instead have to actively and continually use it in order to keep it secure. Hence an ongoing Spider-Woman series. This may also be the reason why Spider-Woman got her own cartoon in 1979, but that only lasted one season and it’s easy to read the issues in this volume and be totally unaware of it.

And to be honest this awkward birth shows in this volume. The most obvious signs are the major changes in Spider-Woman’s origin between Spotlight and her own title, and also the modifications to her costume. Less obvious are some of the changes throughout the series as the book seems to be in a state of flux, with the location changing abruptly after the first two issues, the supporting cast and alter-ego status quo also changing quite rapidly, and even little things like whether Spider-Woman’s long black hair is real or a wig change between issues. This is a serious sign of a character rushed into print before being properly thought through and it shows. There’s a bit more stability on the writing and drawing front, but still rather a lot of regular writers for twenty-five issues. Marvel Spotlight #32 is written by Roy Thomas, then all the Marvel Two-in-One issues and Spider-Woman #1-8 are by Marv Wolfman. Mark Gruenwald writes #9-20, with Steven Grant co-plotting #20. Michael Fleisher then writes #21-25. The art fares better – Spotlight is drawn by Sal Buscema, then four of the five Two-in-One issues are by Ron Wilson with John Buscema filling in on the other. Carmine Infantino draws Spider-Woman #1-19, then Frank Springer on #20-22, Trevor von Eeden on #23-24 and finally Steve Leialoha on #25 (and he continues into the issues in the next volume). (With so many creators, their labels have been placed in a separate post.) Again this reinforces the idea of nobody really knowing why the series is there other than to protect Marvel’s corporate interests.

But in several areas the series avoids doing the obvious. Most of the other female spin-off heroes up to this point tended to have a clear connection to the male hero and obtained their powers either the same way or through them. Mary Marvel was the hero’s long lost sister. Supergirl was a long lost cousin. She-Hulk was a previously unmentioned cousin. Ms. Marvel was a supporting cast member. Batgirl the daughter of one. Bat-Girl was the niece of Batwoman. I totally forget the background of the various Hawkgirls and Hawkwomen (but in my defence Hawk continuity is more complicated than brain surgery). It beggars belief that as a result of this the Wasp (the daughter of a murdered previously unseen associate of Ant-Man) and Batwoman (a wealthy heiress who admired Batman from afar but had no pre-existence or previously unseen connection) should be the most original in this regard. But in both her origins Spider-Woman beats them all hands down. As for powers, the Bat characters had none but developed their skills in imitation of their hero. Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk were both involved in accidents with their male counterparts whilst the Wasp was given hers by Ant-Man. Supergirl was of the same race as her cousin and so gained her powers the same way, whilst Mary Marvel found that the Marvel family all had access to powers. So it would have been totally natural to make Spider-Woman a woman close to Spider-Man who gained powers very similar to him – perhaps the radioactive spider could have tracked him down and bitten her by accident? Or a blood transfusion? (Oh wait, Aunt May had that way back in the Lee/Ditko years and nobody’s ever seen the Amazing Spider-Aunt.) Or even an experiment to try to reproduce Spider-Man’s powers? But instead they tried something different that’s completely detached from Spider-Man, who in turn doesn’t show up for an obligatory guest appearance until issue #20. Spider-Woman shares the ability to stick to walls and super strength, but she lacks both a spider-sense and webshooters (and probably the ability to crawl along rope and cables as though they were webs). Instead she has the ability to generate “venom blasts” of electrical discharges, and the ability to glide on air currents, though the way that’s usually portrayed she might as well be flying outright. And then there’s her two origins.

The first origin we’re offered is that Spider-Woman was a real spider who was evolved to humanoid form by the High Evolutionary and named “Arachne”, but she found she didn’t fit in with his other evolutions and left to wander in confusion. Eventually she fell under the spell of Hydra and became an agent for them, but in her first appearance she discovers Hydra’s true nature and breaks from them. (And since she was created to see off Filmation’s plans, it seems almost appropriate that Filmation in turn went on to borrow this latter element of her origin for She-Ra.) This is all rather messy (and reportedly was originally planned for Wolverine!) and it’s hard to see how the character could have lasted in a workable way as an animal in human form with no real roots at all. The original version of costume is also a little too generic – other than the underarm webbing it’s just a standard issue jumpsuit with only the design and colours to mark it out. The first couple of Spider-Woman stories aren’t much either – an assassination attempt on Nick Fury in which she discovers the true nature of Hydra, and an overlong adventure with the Thing in London in which Spider-Woman once more starts out as an agent of Hydra (did something got lost in communication) but winds up allying with Ben Grimm against a string of foes. The team-up doesn’t really add anything beyond the revelation that she is actually a woman after all, and that comes at the very end. A five part epic in the Thing’s title with yet more guest stars wandering in and out doesn’t strike me as the best way to build excitement for Spider-Woman’s own series. It also doesn’t help that so much of the Marvel universe is centred on New York, but up to this point all of Spider-Woman’s stories have been set in Europe (although the London depicted is more of a tourist postcard than the real thing, as is so often the case in American comics).

Once the series gets going things start to change, although the justification isn’t always the best. After encountering a SHIELD agent who pulls her mask off, Spider-Woman decides she needs to disguise herself further in both identities – and so dies her hair black and cuts the mask to let said hair flow freely. No I’m not sure how that works either. Still it brings a greater degree of originality to her design, although it’s not always the most practical, especially as her Spider-Woman hair gets longer and longer to the point where it’s hard to believe that Jessica is able to compress it all in her every day hairstyles. I’m also astounded that it’s not until issue #16 that a villain grabs her by the hair – and this brings the revelation she’s wearing a wig with her costume (so what was the point of having the same hair colour in both identities?). But it’s the origin that’s revamped.

We are now told that Spider-Woman is a real human, Jessica Drew, who succumbed to radiation sickness when her father worked with the High Evolutionary to build Mount Wundagore (all part of wider Marvel mythology and best not gone into here). Jessica’s father had noted the ability of spiders to survive extreme conditions and so injected her with an experimental spider-serum to save her but it wasn’t enough, so the High Evolutionary proposed to place her in a genetic accelerator to enhance her chances. The strain of Jessica’s condition and arguments over cures killed Jessica’s mother and her father disappeared, whilst she remained in the accelerator growing at a reduced rate. Eventually she emerged in adulthood and cured, with the ability to resist all venoms, toxins and the like, but also highly detached from the world around her, both because of the ignorance in her knowledge but also because most other people (and the High Evolutionary’s creations) sensed something about her that made them distinctly uneasy in her presence. Further on in the series this is revealed to be down to abnormal pheromone production but as soon as Jessica starts taking special pills the problem magically disappears.

There’s some real magic in these stories as well but after the first year it fades, which just adds to the sense of confusion about the direction. In the second issue Spider-Woman befriends the mysterious Magnus, but it’s never really explained how he found her or why – points explicitly acknowledged in issue #13 when the character is written out and he doesn’t reappear in this volume. There are things such as long running subplots and mysteries, and then there are unexplained points that are just forgotten about, and this comes under the latter heading. Magnus appears at a point when there’s quite a lot of magic flying about due to the presence of Excaliber (sic) – a thief who has been transformed by the legendary sword – and Morgan le Fay. Once the scene shifts to Los Angeles the magic is toned down apart from some individual issues and Magnus becomes less a mentor to Jessica than a convenient plot device, most obviously when he magics up her costume at a party and wipes all the guests’ memory of her presence. Magic can work in specific stories, most obviously the climax of the Brothers Grimm storyline, but as part of the overall set-up it fails because the attempt is to present Spider-Woman as an adventurer and crime fighter, and a magical supporter who can fix so many of the problems, but curiously doesn’t solve others such as Jessica’s aura putting off others, jars with that.

“Do you know how hard it is to find supervillains in Los Angeles?” That was the reaction of the Angel many years after the Champions series, but it could apply just as much to Spider-Woman. As I said above the Marvel universe is concentrated on New York and it’s been rare for a title to successfully locate elsewhere. Avengers West Coast is the longest lasting I can think of but in general it’s hard to escape the orbit of the Big Apple in a universe with a high degree of interaction and crossover. And this shows with the threats Spider-Woman has to face. In a series where the civilian side of Jessica’s life is poorly developed it’s natural to hope for some good villains to up the tension. But instead the foes here are a generally dire collection with few having had much prominence elsewhere other than Morgan le Fay which is usually a sign of just how forgettable a foe is. Early on were are presented with the mysterious Brother Grimm, whose personality varies at times and who appears to be in two places at once. I wonder how long it took contemporary readers to work that one out! And whilst the mystery of his identity isn’t shoved down readers’ throats it isn’t actually that hard to guess. Others like the Hangman, Gypsy Moth, Madame Doll, the Clown (no relation to the Circus of Crime member) and Nekra all feel rather uninspired, whilst Congressman Wyatt is just a straightforward corrupt politician who serves a single purpose. The Needle is an exception, providing a strong degree of real fear, though his origin is full of plot holes (just how does an old man beaten up suddenly gain such powers?) and unfortunately much of his impact depends on his novelty, making it hard to reuse him. Then there’s the Gamesman, who rather improbably falls in love with Spider-Woman to the point where she tries to get him early parole but the romance rapidly evaporates after an encounter with his successor.

Romance and the supporting cast also get poor development. Early on Jessica and Magnus take up residence in the home of Mrs Dolly but she and her sons aren’t really developed until a two-part story that reveals they are the Brothers Grimm (the revelation that there are in fact two could be sign a mile off) and she has powers of her own. That story in #11-12 quickly removes them from the scene and soon after Magnus departs to work in showbusiness. The other early supporting cast member of prominence is Jerry Hunt, a SHIELD agent who falls for Jessica at first sight but who has an up and down relationship with her before assignments take him away and it becomes clear the two are incompatible. This helps wipe the slate clean midway through these issues, and Jessica develops a friendship with Lindsay McCabe who she meets at group therapy. Lindsay is one of the few people who does not instantly recoil from her and the two become close, though Jessica neither confides her big secret nor takes steps to protect Lindsay who is targeted by the Clown after he spots Spider-Woman entering her apartment. Jessica also briefly has her first job as a receptionist at the clinic but this is dropped after the revelation the clinic was being used by Nekra and the Cult of Kali for their own purposes.

We get a few guest appearances by other heroes but two stand out the most. The Shroud pops up during the Nekra storyline together with his origin that’s a cross between Batman and Dr Doom. Despite an initial fight Spider-Woman rapidly comes to trust him, even letting him stay at her apartment when he tracks her down, before taking out the Cult of Kali. However the encounter everyone must have been waiting ages for comes in issue #20, showing remarkable restraint, when Spider-Woman finally meets Spider-Man. However neither is aware of who the other is – Spider-Woman has managed to maintain a degree of secrecy about her existence and is generally ignorant of the New York superhero scene (Peter Parker is on a photo assignment out west). The two have a fight that shows off their respective powers before a final conversation in which Spider-Man gives her some useful tips for the future. It’s also notable that he never learns her name so doesn’t get worked up about infringement.

Issue #21 sees a new status quo suddenly dropped into place whereby Spider-Woman is now working at times as a bounty hunter, delivering criminals direct to Police Captain Walsh (with rewards sent to a secure box), operating in tandem with Scotty McDowell, a would-be agent who has been confined to a wheelchair and so now uses his genius and computer to help others catch criminals (this was a decade before the similar Oracle at DC). And yes he’s carrying a torch for Spider-Woman but she doesn’t notice it. Spider-Woman has also somehow obtained a theatrical costumer’s due to some unexplained tragedy. The last few issues here follow this status quo but it’s yet another change of direction for a young series.

As I said at the start, Spider-Woman was created and kept around for corporate reasons and creatively it shows. The early issues of her series are by Marv Wolfman who at the time was turning in a fantastic run on Amazing Spider-Man but here his work feels like an afterthought, written to satisfy a mandate. Mark Gruenwald’s work tries to undo some of the problems and then take the title in a clear direction, but all that takes a while and by the time the book is clearly repositioned he was about to move on, then Michael Fleisher comes in with a whole new status quo. When combined with the shifting supporting cast the whole thing is very much a series that exists for the sake of existing, rather than because it had developed a strong identity and purpose. It’s to be commended for keeping for the originality in not becoming a crude feminised version of Spider-Man and instead having as little to do with the wall crawler as possible, but this may have gone too far in the other direction, resulting in a series set in an awkward location with poor villains and a badly defined, ever shifting status quo. At this stage it’s quite forgettable.
Posted by at 3 comments:
Labels: , ,

Friday, 29 June 2012

Spider-Woman: An introduction

1976 saw the creation of a new character, Spider-Woman, debuting in Marvel Spotlight #32 (cover dated February 1977 – a sign of how confusing the years can be). In 1978 she received her own ongoing series, which has been collected in two Essential volumes, and in 1979 she secured her own cartoon which lasted one season. Her title lasted fifty issues – until 1993 that was the record for a Marvel comic headlined by a female superhero.

Yet her impact on the Spider-Man titles was almost nil. She had a few cameos but her only substantial appearance during her original run was in Marvel Team-Up #97 (not yet reached by the Essentials) and that was a rare non-Spider-Man issue in which the Hulk instead headlined. As we’ll see she has no direct connection to Spider-Man (although later Spider-Women would do better in this regard) and is really a spin-off in name only.

I did consider for quite some time whether to include Spider-Woman in this series or not because of this. Ultimately I came down in favour of inclusion because creatively she only existed because of Spider-Man and it’s worth considering just how much originality and distance from the male character she actually received. But first it’s necessary to consider the track record on female superheroes, particularly for Marvel in the late 1970s.

Until I sat down to write this piece, I was under the impression that female superheroes have generally not been successful in their own titles. True it’s hard to forget that DC has had Wonder Woman for seventy years (her solo title debuted in the summer of 1942) but I assumed that’s very much the exception that proves the rule (and I’ve read that historically her title has never been a top seller and at times it’s only survived because the character was held under a “keep her in regular print or the rights revert to the creator” clause and the merchandising opportunities were too good to loose). The other historic exception of note is Supergirl, which is a sign of where the creativity and interest goes, and also an indication of the commercial factors behind them – DC was quick to secure the trademarks for various Superman spin-offs but took time to actually use them. Eventually both Superboy and Supergirl were firm features, able to stop other companies cashing in on the Super-franchise.

It seems in digging about that there have in fact been a few more female titles that actually lasted some time – Mary Marvel (the younger sister of Fawcett’s, later DC’s, Captain Marvel), Batgirl (just how many Batgirls have there been by now?), Catwoman and Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane although it was her boyfriend who (usually) did the superheroing. (And no doubt more that I’ve overlooked.) Spot the pattern? It seems as though a female title has normally only succeeded if it’s spinning off an established male title and/or there are strong corporate demands to shore up the male character, either by blocking rivals from creating female derivatives or to boost sales (and in the case of the second Batgirl, TV ratings).

Marvel’s female titles generally fall into this vein as well. The longest running female led title I can think of is Spider-Girl – the adventures of Spider-Man’s daughter in an alternate future which lasted 100 issues from 1998 until 2006 (despite constantly being under threat of cancellation), followed by a renumbering & retitling as The Amazing Spider-Girl which lasted 30 more issues until 2009. Second comes the second She-Hulk series which ran for sixty issues between 1989 and 1994 (although in Marvel’s modern numbering style later She-Hulk series have seen the numberings shoved together to have an “issue #100”). In joint third place with fifty issues each is the original Spider-Woman series between 1978 and 1983 and the second Ms. Marvel series between 2006 and 2010. (After that comes Dazzler with forty-two issues from 1980 to 1985. Then it gets into various series that only lasted up to three years maximum such as the first Ms. Marvel, the first She-Hulk series, Silver Sable, Elektra and X-23 amongst others.)

Both the Marvel Essential and DC Showcase Presents series are biased toward the pre 1990s output but how do the female titles fare there? Well DC has put out volumes containing Wonder Woman, Supergirl and Batgirl (largely collecting her strips in various other titles), whilst Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane is in the Superman Family volumes (the latter title combined Lois Lane with Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen). Showcase Presents didn’t launch until late 2005 and the first female headline titles came in mid to late 2007 with Batgirl, Wonder Woman and Supergirl all debuting that year. Marvel’s Essentials have been around since 1996 but took longer to snowball and initially focused on just the big name series. However from 2002 onwards some of the smaller and less successful series began to get their own Essentials, starting with Ant-Man in February that year. It wasn’t until December 2005 that any female title got an Essential, with Spider-Woman being the first. Savage She-Hulk, the character’s original 1979-1981 series, followed in July 2006, then came Ms. Marvel in February 2007 and Dazzler in August 2007. Make of that what you will.

All of the relevant Marvel titles so far Essentialised originated during a short period in the late 1970s, although Dazzler was delayed for various reasons. And in all but one case there were well-known corporate mandates crawling all over them. I don’t honestly know if this was also the case with Ms. Marvel but I don’t think it’s entirely coincidental that a female with a name including the company’s name appeared just a few years after DC had revived Fawcett’s Captain Marvel and his supporting cast. (Captain Marvel had originally been published by Fawcett in the 1940s and early 1950s until a lawsuit by DC for similarities to Superman led to the character being ditched. Then in the next twenty or so years Marvel adopted that name and established their own Captain Marvel character, securing the trademark. DC subsequently obtained the Fawcett stable of characters and revived them in their own titles, though they’ve never been able to get the “Captain Marvel” trademark back for the original.) Other points that strongly suggest corporate rather than creative design are the fact that her origin was unclear for many issues and the original writer was Marvel’s then Editor-in-Chief (although that title wasn’t yet used), Gerry Conway who left after just two issues. The character was a pre-existing member of the Captain Marvel supporting cast who had gained powers from him due to an accident – as though it was hard to come up with something more original. Her title lasted just twenty-three issues and then the character went on to be used in other ways (and I very much mean used but that’s for a consideration of the Avengers). (EDIT: Since drafting that I’ve since seen this comment by later Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter that supports the corporate mandate theory.)

It’s reasonably well known that both Spider-Woman and She-Hulk were created because Marvel were concerned to secure the intellectual property to female versions of their highest profile characters. I’ll come to Spider-Woman below, but in the case of She-Hulk this was because of fears that the success of the Hulk TV series would lead to spin-off characters (this was an era when The Six Million Dollar Man had spawned The Bionic Woman) and decided to create a female version themselves to ensure they retained the copyrights. The Savage She-Hulk began in late 1979 (cover date February 1980) but benefited from a clear origin at the outset and, after the first issue by Stan Lee, a single writer for the rest of her run. But she was still a clear knock-off of her male counterpart – she was his hither-to-unmentioned cousin who gained similar powers due to a blood transfusion, though generally she’s retained full intelligence & control in both identities, unlike her cousin’s multiple personalities and combinations of minds & bodies. Her original title last just twenty-five issues but she’s been revived several times since and has built up quite a fan base.

The Dazzler was even more corporate driven, originating out a plan by Marvel to have a singer-superhero with a real-life singer to do promotional appearances. Over time there were even proposals to work with a record company and even produce a movie (it all gets complicated – have a read of Jim Shooter: The Debut of the Dazzler for more details). The project kicked around for a few years, by which time the disco scene began to die. However a desire to test the potential of the direct market by doing a direct market only title that was only available in comic book shops that pre-order on a non-returnable basis (unlike the newsstands that operate on a sale-or-return basis that can lead to hundreds of thousands of copies printed that never get sold) came about. Wanting to minimise the backlash from the newsstand distribution, an obscure character was picked and so Dazzler was one of the first ever direct market only titles. The series was initially quite successful and lasted a total of forty-two issues but suffered various problems such as turnover of creative teams, unsuccessful spin-offs and a switch to bimonthly publication before eventual cancellation. Still the character had some originality, not being a derivative of any existing Marvel character. However her origin was one of the simplest for Marvel – she’s a mutant and thus born with her powers. Okay she made her first appearance in X-Men but she was an early sign of what would become a rather lazy approach to origins in later years.

This was the broad background to the environment in which Spider-Woman was created in 1976 and provides the obvious points of comparisons for the series as I go through the two volumes in future posts.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)