My discovery of the Dazzler collection distracted me from the post I had originally been writing in praise of Spider-Woman, who ranks up there with my beloved Kitty Pryde as perhaps my favorite all-time comic-book character ever. It pleases me mightily to see her show up in so many comments about beloved, overlooked heroines of the Bronze Age.
There’s more than a touch of nostalgia to my love for Spider-Woman, since I haven’t seen much of her since the end of her own series back in 1983. (Yes, I loved her before I became distracted by puberty, New Wave, and skater boys.) From what I’ve unearthed about her subsequent appearances, she hasn’t quite had the modern redemption that Kitty has had in the last few years (aside from a few appearances in Alias, from what I hear), really fleshing her out as a substantial character apart from the original gimmicks. I’m hoping that Brian Michael Bendis finally gives her some juicy storylines once the New Avengers gets underway.
In fact, she’s the only reason I’m really ging the New Avengers a chance, what with the way my whole excitement for them was crushed by the gigantic mess of the Avengers Disassembled arc. Did any of you read that? What a mess, and the start of the new series only showed the tiniest bit of promise. But I like Bendis a lot, and he seems to pulled together characters he already cares about, so maybe he will make me proud with his handling of Spider-Woman. Hell, I don’t even know if she still wears the same costume, so even that detail would make me happy.
Even though she has mostly been developed as an independent character, I always felt a little bad that she got a lot of her big breaks because of the tangential relationship to Spider-Man (in name and basic concept, but that’s about it). Her own book and the cartoon series never really took off, and I always suspected that the reason had a lot to do with people discovering how little she actually had to do with the web crawler, and then wondering what her deal was. I was never disappointed, though. She has a backstory with plenty to offer on its own: mutated, aged in suspended animation (much like a fine cheese), raised by a talking humanoid cow, HYDRA agent, private eye, girlfriend of the ghost of an Arthurian wizard. We should all have such a colorful background!
Personally, I’d just like the healing ability. Or maybe the venom blasts, in case someone badgers me on a grumpy day.
