Spider-Woman #6
Written By: Dennis Hopeless
Art By: Joelle Jones
Colors By: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letters By: VC’s Travis Lawham
Price: $3.99
Release Date: 4/27/16
Out of all the spider women related books Spider-Woman is probably my favorite. Followed closely by Spider-Gwen of course, Hopeless has done a great job flushing out Jessica’s character in this series especially in this second volume. Even though so far the Spider Women event hasn’t really blown me away I felt confident in trusting Hopeless to at least add a fun installment to this event, and you know what my confidence was not misplaced.
Plot
The plot is really basic when you break it down really. In this issue Jessica goes to investigate her Earth-65 counterpart who we found out in last week’s issue of Silk turns out to be an agent of S.I.L.K. the evil organization that is controlled by the Earth-65 version of Cindy Moon. Jessica finds out that her Earth-65 counterpart is a guy named Jessie Drew who lives a comfy suburban double life with a wife and two kids, all while be a secret agent for an evil organization. Jessica has a talk with Jessie’s wife and the two of them eventually come to an understanding. After clearing things up with Jessie’s wife Jessica meets back up with the girls just in time to test out Reed’s interdenominational portal so Jess can finally get back home to her baby.
Story
If you’ve read Hopeless’ Spider-Woman from the beginning then you should know that this isn’t the first time Jessica’s had to deal with an evil doppelganger from an alternate universe. On the bright side though at this this time her evil doppelganger isn’t the villain’s concubine, well as far as we know right now at least I honestly wouldn’t put it past Jessica’s luck to have that happen to her twice. Like I said earlier in the plot section Jessica goes to investigate the home of her Earth-65 counterpart and it turns out he’s a family man living a secret double life. I loved Jessica’s inner monologue when she’s approaching the house. I mean with her luck it’s only natural to expect the worst right?
Jessica manages to get in the house by telling her counterpart’s wife that she’s Jessie’s cousin from out of town. The two of them seem to get along well at first, that is until Jessica locks Jessie’s wife in the pantry so that she can investigate Jessie further and see if he hid Gwen’s dimensional teleportation watch somewhere in the house. Jessie’s wife eventually breaks out of the pantry pissed and confused, leaving Jessica no choice but to tell her the truth. At first Jessie’s wife is hostile towards Jessica because she believes that Jessica poses a threat to her family, but after a mom to mom heart to heart the two of them reach an understanding and Jessie’s wife gives Jessica a bag full of Jessie’s guns and sends her on her way.
Meanwhile Gwen and Cindy have to fight off evil Cindy’s henchmen at her base. The two of them still aren’t getting along very well. Gwen blames this whole thing on Cindy both directly and indirectly. She says that they’re in this whole mess because Cindy decided to be selfish and split off from the group to go look for this world’s version of her family. Honestly I think Gwen’s right. Cindy made a bad call and definitely deserves some of the blame for this, but at the same time I can’t really blame Cindy for wanting to look. I guess my Spider-Gwen bias makes me side more with Gwen over Cindy, but I’d be interested to see what you guys think.
Eventually our three spider women meet back up at Gwen’s place just in time because Reed has officially finished building a portal for them to use to get back to the marvel prime universe. That’s not even the coolest part, get this, Reed made the entire thing out of legos. Man I freaking love this kid. Jessica is eager to get back home to her baby, but Cindy on the other hand is more apprehensive. She contemplates if she should leave since on this world she knows for sure that her family is alive and around and this could be her chance to reconnect with them. This is where once again Jessica has an awesome moment where she steps in as a mentor. She tells Cindy that she’s a hero and a spider woman, no matter how much she wants to walk away and be normal deep down she knows that she never could.
Jessica manages to break the tension of this serious moment by freaking the girls out with a little prank. That scene had me cracking up. The looks on their faces were absolutely priceless. I love how Hopeless balances dramatic moments with humor. His comedic timing is great.
Now that Jess, Cindy, and Gwen are back in the marvel prime universe it’s time to get to work. Jess tell Cindy and Gwen to start searching for Jessie Drew and evil Cindy and see just how much evil they’ve been up to while the three of them were gone. Where’s Jess going you may ask? The answer’s simple really, bad guys can wait Jessica has a bigger priority to take care of. That priority is of course checking in on her baby. Granted this issue didn’t leave on some massive epic cliffhanger that makes me want to read the next part asap, but because I’m so invested in Jessica and her baby this ending was satisfying enough for me.
Art
You know overall with this Spider Women event I have to say one of my consistent complaints has been that the art just isn’t as good as the art that we get from the usual artists on these series. Well I’m happy to report that this wasn’t the case for Spider-Woman #6. I loved the artwork in this issue and the colors really made it pop. Jones brings a lot of detail to each character especially when it came to the facial expressions. It helps sell you on the drama and even the more comedic moments.
One of the other problems I’ve had with the Spider-Women event so far is that our three main leads all looked essentially the same but with different hair. Jones actually makes each character very distinct and unique. I really appreciated that. Another thing I noticed is there is a slight difference in both the art and coloring when we cross over from Earth-65 back to the marvel prime earth. I always find subtle details like that really awesome. All in all this is definitely the strongest issue in terms of art for the Spider Women event so far. As much as I love Javier Rodriguez’ artwork if Joelle Jones wants to replace him as the regular artist for Spider-Woman to help lighten Javier’s workload I would be a all for it.
Final Verdict
In terms of plot progression for the event this issue didn’t do much. However the art for this issue is the strongest that I’ve seen from this event so far and it had a few great character moments for Jessica, so I’m willing to give this a pass. One thing I wonder about gong forward for Jessica is now that she’s seen that her Earth-65 counterpart can balance having a double life will she start taking the pressure off of herself, or will this just add more to it? Like I said before, this issue wasn’t a game changer but I had a lot of fun with it. If you’re enjoying the Spider-Woman series from All-New, All-Different Marvel so far I think you’ll enjoy this issue as well. For me personally this is my favorite issue of the Spider Women event so far, so I definitely recommend that you guys go pick up Spider-Woman #6 if you haven’t already.