Spider-Gwen 001 Feb. 2015 Review
SPOILERS AHEAD! YE BE WARNED!
I have been an avid fan of Marvel comics since I was very young. I grew up reading X-Men, Wolverine, and Deadpool comics. I never really saw any comics just about Storm or Black Widow in my comic book shops. Only the male heroes were represented. Now when I walk into a comic book store I see featured in the front display Spider-Gwen and Captain Marvel. A Black Widow comic was only a few shelves over. It was amazing to see Marvel’s amazing female heroes get some of the spotlight. In order to keep the Women of Marvel love going, all the comics I review from here on out will be Female Heroes ONLY. Welcome to Hacker Labs’ first Women of Marvel Review! Today, we are checking out Spider-Gwen 001 (Marvel NOW Feb. 2015).
To catch you up…
Welcome to Earth-65! On this Earth Gwen Stacy was the one bitten by a radioactive spider, not Peter Parker, and the world is given Spider-Woman. By day she is Gwen Stacy, drummer for The Mary Janes led by front-woman Mary Jane Watson. In this universe Peter Parker is the villain Lizard who uses a chemical to gain his powers. The chemicals kill him in the end, but since he was battling Spider-Woman at the time, she gets blamed for his death. J. Jonah Jameson is leading the outcry for her arrest and has the Mayor convinced Spider-Woman is a bad “guy”. In this universe Gwen’s dad is a Police Chief, so he is ordered to hunt her down – not knowing Spider-Woman is his own daughter. He finds out after an assassin attacks George Stacy at one of Gwen’s concerts. Spider-Woman stopped him, of course, but her dad finds out that his beloved daughter is Spider-Woman and tells her to run “before he changes his mind”.
Shortly after, Gwen is recruited by Spider-UK and other Spider-whathaveyous from the various Earths in the multiverse, called Spider-Verse. Gwen has since returned to Earth-65 where Vulture has been terrorizing the city while she has been saving the multiverse. Now we are caught up to where Spider-Gwen opens.
001
The actual comic book gives a rather vague summary of Gwen Stacy/Spider-Woman/Spider-Gwen via one page of panels showing a frightened Gwen being bitten followed by a single panel of Spider-Woman holding a dieing (we assume Peter Parker) boy with green glowing eyes, then a couple of panels of Matt Murdock telling Aleksei Sytsevich that Kingpin wants him to hunt down George Stacy, only referred to as “Big Bacon”. The final couple of panels show the attack at the concert and George seeing his daughter is Spider-Woman.
Vulture attacks some teens and a police officer, Grimm. Spider-Gwen thwarts some evil doers while talking to herself and avoiding her father’s calls. Capt. Stacy has been relieved of command of the Special Crimes Task Force, who is in charge of hunting down Spider-Woman. He has been replaced by Captain Frank Castle. We get our first glimpse of Castle “interrogating” Aleksei with his fists.
We flash back to Gwen and learn of her mild-mannered alter-ego’s personal issues with her band The Mary Janes. (Sheesh!) Gwen Spider-Womans up, leaves a message for Vulture and he takes the bait. Battle insues. Vulture drags Spider-Gwen high into the air and rather unceremoniously drops her. The final panel shows her cell on the ground; another call from Dad goes unanswered. TO BE CONTINUED…
The emo-Gwen I could do without, but the rest wasn’t too bad. I wish they had included more information about what was happening with Spider-Gwen for newer readers. Not too bad of an introduction, though. A little lack-luster, but they usually are. I am looking forward to seeing where they take her in her very first solo series. Thanks for reading Hacker Labs’ Women of Marvel!
