SPIDER-WOMAN #7
Written By Dennis Hopeless
Art by Jöelle Jones, Lorenzo Ruggiero, & Rachelle Rosenberg
Published by Marvel Comics
Release Date: May 18, 2016
Yeah, no more fighting around babies.
Jess shows her Earth-65 doppelganger she throws a mean right hook when she finds him in her apartment. Roger is none the wiser, leaving the two counterparts to duke it out until an unruly little one breaks up their fight. Gwen does her own sleuthing, finding out an unsettling truth about Jesse and giving herself a new advantage.
Spider-Woman #7 brings forward the fighter in Jess while still keeping in toe with Spider-Women and playing off the previous arc of the series. I want to see issues like this as Spider-Woman becomes undone from the web of the crossover. There are bigger events around the corner, but hopefully the action and character driven parts of this story will stick around. These elements help to characterize Jess as a multifaceted woman who can wear many different hats while also looking at her internal struggle in doing so.
Dennis Hopeless basically wrote A Tale of Two Jess in Spider-Woman #7, keeping many of the Spider’s core components in her Earth-65 counterpart. Both of them were nearly carbon copies of each other, allowing for an interesting fight and interaction. Hopeless’s parallel with Jesse’s origin was both close and distinct enough to feel less like a facsimile. The major discrepancy between the two characters asserted Jess’ heroic qualities and her moral standing, which will likely have a major impact later in the series. The only thing that felt off was Jess’ speech to Gwen, which fits her character, but seemed rushed and almost inconsequential. I would have liked to see this interaction play more heavily into the story.
If Jess is gonna throw ‘bows, I want Jöelle Jones to keep drawing her. Jones draws a mean fight scene, using perspective and movement within each panel to emphasize each punch and crack. Lorenzo Ruggiero, new to inks for the series, puts bold emphasis on characters, particularly during action scenes. On many pages, each character appears more angular and defined, adding drama to Jones fluid style.
Rachelle Rosenberg’s crisp colors infuse the story with an aspect of J. Drew I’ve always found important: she’s a character who has continued to feel grounded in reality amongst a backdrop of superpowers. The pages that take place in the apartment feel ordinary, like sipping a cup of coffee as the sun sets, which captures the part of Jess that desires normality but that is regularly intruded upon by interdimensional conflict. Major atmospheric use of Rosenberg’s talent comes from the pages that address Jesse’s origin, the monochromatic blues depicting scenes that are an odd mix of light and somber.
On its own, Spider-Woman #7 is enjoyable. Who doesn’t like multiversal twins, broken furniture, crying babies, and Spider powers? There are some minor parts of the story that could have been more fully fleshed out, but overall this issue is a point that gets a lot of Jess’ world right as a standalone story and that helps to give some background to the Spider-Women crossover. This issue is a good mix of storybuilding and intent use of character qualities and I recommend it if you’re a fan of Jessica Drew.
The Verdict: 8.5/10
