Spider-Woman #8

It’s the climax to second arc of Jessica Drew’s solo series and it looks like she’s gotten herself into quite the tussle. How she gets herself out of this one is the big question along with the major consequences of what happens after. 
 

Story: Dennis Hopeless
Pencils: Javier Rodriguez
Inks: Alvaro Lopez
Colours: Muntsa Vicente
Letters: Travis Lanham
Cover: Javier Rodriguez
Publisher: Marvel 

Jessica Drew has taken herself out of the superhero game but still finds herself wanting to help people. Unfortunately none of it goes as smoothly as she plans. Especially as her latest endeavour leads her to find an entire town of supposedly missing women. The twist is that these women escaped from their villainous partners in order to regain some control over their own lives. Jess was last seen knocked down by a crazy contraption by one of the founders of said town in a desperate bid to protect it. 
 

This second arc of Spider-Woman feels like Hopeless has certainly gotten into the rhythm of the type of story they want to tell as well as the voice of Jessica Drew. It certainly reads like a non-superhero book. Jess is incredibly grounded with her bitter humour as she continues to struggle with figuring out what it is that she wants. Her fight at the start of this issue doesn’t really look like a win for her at all, she’s struggling, and struggling hard. She gets knocked down, and she realizes that the real superheroes would be getting up again right away, and yet, she doesn’t. She can’t quite pull herself up. 
 

Spider-Woman brings on the complexity of the world. And is really solid for someone who’s looking to read a story that kind of plays with that boundary of someone who should help, and has the capabilities to help, but doesn’t know how. She doesn’t know how, especially on her own. Luckily by the end of this adventure she finds herself a maybe-partner in Ben Urich, which proves to be a team up of interesting dynamics so far, they’re differences balance out in a way that isn’t cookie-cutter predictable, yet still satisfying because it’s just predictable enough (for now?). 
 

So by the end of it all Jess has to make the call on what it means to help people and how to do it in a way that’s still true to what she wants to accomplish ever since she left the Avengers. 
 

Beyond the story which is rather compelling, the art is just the same. The colours have a mysterious quality to them. While there are many panels (to which the panels themselves are laid out in a compelling way for readers) of bright colours, there are some that are dark which lead the reader to change the tone of where Jess’s mind is going. Rodriguez also renders some of the best faces for how normal everyone looks, not cartoonish, not overtly attractive, and each face is unique. It’s grounding art that compliments a grounding storyline. 
 

I’m actually really pleased with how this second arc went and how it wrapped up— finally finding its voice in the story they want to tell with Jessica and I think it’ll be exciting to see what happens to her character as this progresses.