Today
I’m staying home for all the pharmacists working right now.
Chronologically,
this story comes before volume 2 of Spider-Gwen,
a crossover between the titular parallel-Earth webslinger and her fellow
Spider-Women Jessica Drew and Cindy Moon. This team-up offers some nice
character exploration, good parallel-world hijinks, and plenty of cool action.
At
some point, I’m probably going to have to go back and read the original Spider-Verse story, because I’m guessing
that’s where Gwen met compatriots Jessica and Cindy (and I assume it’s also
where she got the handy-dandy world-hopping device that she uses here to keep
in touch with them.) Anyway, this story finds the ladies hanging out on Gwen’s
Earth when they’re caught up in an unwelcome evil plot. Not only is Gwen’s
world-hopping device stolen, meaning new mom Jessica can’t get back home to her
baby, they also find themselves crossing paths with a mysterious villain who
has it in for them big time.
I
know that I say this whenever I write about Spider-Gwen,
but I’m still loving everything about her comic being set on a parallel Earth.
The differences between Earth-65 and Marvel’s main universe, Earth-616, are
magnified even more here thanks to the presence of Earth-616’s Cindy and
Jessica, because the question obviously comes up of what their counterparts on
this Earth might be doing. Between the two worlds, we also get some Reed
Richards, Bobbi Morse/Mockingbird, and J. Jonah Jameson action!
For
all that this is a neat crossover featuring parallel-world shenanigans, it also
digs into the characters of all three Spider-Women. Gwen is of course the one I
know the best so far, and here we see her continuing journey from the last
volume of her comic. But more than just Gwen’s own ongoing struggles, we also
see her life through Jessica and Cindy’s eyes, which puts a different spin on
things.
All
I really knew of Jessica Drew going into this story was a vague awareness of
her name, so she’s pretty brand-new to me. Being a superhero who’s also a new
mom naturally offers interesting angles to explore, and the dynamic between the
more experienced Jessica and the newer Gwen and Cindy is interesting too –
Jessica has the track record to give advice on battle strategies as well as the
more personal aspects of dealing with superhero life. And while I previously
met Cindy Moon a.k.a. Silk in some of the Totally
Awesome Hulk team-up stories, either those comics skated over most of her
origin story or I just didn’t really pick up on it, because I got a lot of new Cindy information here,
foundational stuff that informs her character hugely (and makes her visit to a
parallel Earth even more of a headtrip for her.) I might be interested in
checking out Silk sometime.
I’m
also glad that, even though this volume isn’t specifically under the Spider-Gwen title, I still picked it up
at its proper point in Gwen’s chronology because this crossover looks like
it’ll have ramifications for Gwen going forward. I wouldn’t want to read her
next volume and be scratching my head at the new developments!
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