Spider-Women (2016)

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!