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Marvel Pick Of The Week – March 4, 2015 [SPOILERS]

By Matt Conner

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Pick Of The Week:

Spider-Woman 5, by Dennis Hopeless and Javier Rodriguez

I personally loved that the latest volume of Spider-Woman’s solo title started as a tie-in with the Spider-Verse crossover. It was a great, epic story, and her section of it showed her maturity in comparison to the various Spider-Girls in Peter Parker’s bullpen. She played a tense con using her espionage skills, showing she’s more Black Widow than Friendly Neighborhood. But I saw a lot of negative buzz on the Internet from people who just wanted to read a Spider-Woman story, and that’s not unfair. Until very recently, Jessica Drew hasn’t been associated with Spider-Man at all (as I discussed in my write-up for 50 Greatest Heroes). So for people who want to see her on her own, this issue is a return to the solo hero and an easy jumping-on point.

The story is, in tone, similar to previous successful books like Alias and Hawkeye – Jessica has had enough of big-time super-heroism, so she quits the Avengers and starts riding her awesome motorcycle around New York looking for people to help. And she fails multiple times, making so many bad assumptions that by the end, she’s watching The Porcupine pull a safe out of a bank and has to yell, “You are, in fact, currently committing several crimes, yes?” The down-on-her-luck character has been a part of Marvel since Peter Parker in the Silver Age, and this is a charming example. By the end of the story, Spider-Man mainstay Ben Urich has convinced Jessica to look into a series of kidnappings mainly because she probably can’t mess that up too bad. Dennis Hopeless’s script is a ton of fun, breezing quickly through establishing scenes and setting her new direction up so well that this should have been renumbered as a relaunch.

The other big part of this relaunch is the visual redesign, and Rodriguez knocks that one out of the park. As we saw with Spider-Gwen last week and the popularity of the Batgirl of Burnside over at DC, women respond well when a female character’s costume looks like something she could actually wear. I haven’t seen the new Spider-Woman costume in cosplay at my local conventions yet, but it’s just a matter of time. This look is sexy without objectifying her, keeping some colors and lines from the classic look, but she can wear this on her motorcycle and blend into a crowd if needed. I think she’ll go back to a variation on the original look in a few years, like most heroes do, but I don’t see her looking on this period with regret.

Again, Marvel is showing that when a female character is given respect and thought, her story doesn’t have to be anti-male to be feminist, and great comics result.

Honorable Mentions:

All New Hawkeye 1, because after the last volume of Hawkeye started out great but then let us down with shipping delays and an awful side trip to California, and let’s not forget that it still hasn’t published its final issue yet, we get a fresh take on Hawkeye. He’s still awesome and charming, but maybe he’s a little less tough. And the art! The art! Present day scenes have a tense weight to them, flashbacks to his damaged childhood flow and shimmer, and pages like the one below juxtapose them to pull an excitement I haven’t seen in a Hawkeye comic in months. He’s running from terrorists AND his traumatic memories of being a foster child! (And can we give the Afua Richardson variant cover some love? A lot of love?)

Rocket Raccoon 9, because I love Old Rocket In The Future so much I can barely breathe.

And. He. Watches. BUFFY.

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