Marvel Pick Of The Week - March 11, 2015 [SPOILERS]

Pick Of The Week:

Spider-Gwen 2, by Jason Latour and Robbi Rodriguez

I loved the first issue of Spider-Gwen for the art, the family drama, the promise of an alternate universe twist on beloved street-level characters, and the feminism. Those are all still present in this week’s second issue, but now that the book has grabbed national attention, the creators are free to play with their character and build more of her world.

In many ways, this is a solid super-hero book that follows a young woman in the early stages of her crimefighting career, recovering from a defeat by exploring what she did right (such as webbing up awesome glider wings in her armpits while falling thirty stories to certain doom) and what she should do better next time. We’ve seen Peter Parker do this dozens of times, and this is just as good. What sets this apart is that Gwen’s post-game recap is narrated by her imaginary friend, Peter Porker the Sporktacular Spider-Ham, a talking pig she met in the Spider-Verse crossover. It’s silly and fun, especially when she can’t contain her disgust as he attempts cannibalism with a corn dog. The imaginary animal best friend allows the world of this Spider-Woman to remain realistic but still reminds the reader how much fun we had when these characters joined the crossover.

Another standout of this title is its supporting cast. Gwen’s confused relationship with her police captain father is something we’ve seen in Batgirl, but this dynamic doesn’t show up very often in a Marvel comic. In this issue, he tampers with evidence to keep his daughter out of police crosshairs until he can figure out how to process learning that his daughter is an infamous vigilante, and Gwen has to confront him with an amazing last-page splash of her glaring at him from an alley wall. Gwen’s best friends are her bandmates in The Mary Janes, despite how the self-absorbed lead singer openly hates her for “her stupid-awesome sweatshirt.” I think my favorite part of the entire issue was when enraged guitarist Glory has enough of Mary Jane’s antics and screams, “What kinda raving lunatic buys Taylor Swift on VINYL?”

But I think what moved this book from “This is good!” to “This is my pick of the week!” was how gosh-darn dark this book got. The creative sound effects from the first issue only show up in brief flashbacks to that book’s fight scene, a change that makes this world feel cramped and tense. And in a book where the hero has an imaginary talking pig encouraging her, an alternate version of Matt Murdock pops a blade out of his cane to kill a bird, then torture The Vulture on behalf of the Kingpin. I love bright comic books like Nova and Ms. Marvel, but when these titles mature enough to involve humanity’s potential for violence, the contrast can make both aspects more powerful.

And again, here is an issue of a Marvel comic book, headlined by a woman, that has no need to play up anyone’s gender to show how edgy or different or inclusive it is because Marvel has made gender diversity its new norm. There is still a long way to go for diversity with regard to transgender, queer, body shape, disability, age, and race, but it still means a ton that Marvel has stopped patting itself on the back for releasing more female-led titles and has just gotten back to telling amazing stories with compelling characters. Well done.

Honorable Mentions:

Ant-Man 3, for this scene where Taskmaster has Ant-Man pinned down by a paper clip and shows him his cool new app, “like Uber for mercenary super villains.”

Howard The Duck 1, because She-Hulk loves Taylor Swift and Internet cat photos and here is proof and I love her. Maybe she can hang out with Mary Jane in Spider-Gwen. And me. She can hang out with me.

Thor 6, because I would buy two copies a month of the Lord Thunder Britches ongoing series.

Amazing Spider-Man Special 1, because Spider-Man’s crush on Medusa is about as big as mine.

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Marvel Pick Of The Week – March 11, 2015 [SPOILERS]

By Matt Conner | Mar 11, 2015

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