She's Back!!!

I’d just started collecting comic books at 12 years of age back 1978. I didn’t read them, just collected them. My buddies were hard core collectors and basically I just wanted to fake it and kick it. I wasn’t very at faking it nor kicking it, I being the “fag” “sissy” and “teenage brownie” I was for the most part tolerated. However, when the real talk of comics was discussed I was pretty much treated like, Prissy, from Gone With The Wind, or perhaps, truer to that era, Like Chrissie Snow, from Three’s Company. I didn’t mind, I just like being around my handful of

geeky/nerdy friends, of which obviously, I was the “un-cool” one. As I stated, I wasn’t really into the books, mainly they were composed of hyper-masculine qualities that teens, geeks, nerds, and grown-up kids liked to imagine possessing. super powered beings in worlds, they controlled, amongst populations that bowed down to, depended upon, and worshipped- shit nearly orgasmic in catering to youth and adolescent male fantasies. Simply put, Thor, Hulk, Captain America, Iron man and the like, were a bit too butch for me! However, in the midst of all of this male bonding and testosterone, emerged the most unlikely of super heroes, Jessica Drew, Spiderwoman.

Jessica Drew indeed, fore, like Super man’s Clark Kent and Spiderman’s Peter Parker, Spiderwoman is equally known by her alias. To put it simply, Spiderwoman was a mess. The book had changed directions, editors, writers, storylines at least a dozen times and she was only on her 13th issue! The book was one of (if not the) lowest selling of it on-going series and I fell in love with her, well both, Jessica Drew and her alter-ego. It was the first non-funnies comic book I read from page to page and I was hooked. First off, it was the first super-heroine comic I’d ever read. I was familiar with Wonder Woman, Isis, even Marvel Comics very own, “The Cat” and her cult following, and of course the numerous female super heroes who didn’t have their own on-going series. Spiderwoman proved to be a book/superhero I could call my own.
I dutiful anticipated and read and re-read her every issue. I promptly went out and purchased her back issues, and comic book tie-ins and appearances. I couldn’t get enough. The writers, editors, artists, and direction continues to changed and I was loyal until the end of her 50 issue run. The appeal for Jess, for me, no doubt had to do with her outsider status and the “little-train-that-could” run. You see just about from the very first episode on, Jess, was close to cancellation. Every monthly and eventually bi-monthly issue was, for me, a testament toward sheer will power and determination. Almost a sort of, if she can do it- bounce back and beat the outcome of other failed female marvel comics, it she could persevere, so could I! melodramatic perhaps, but hey, what do you expect from a teenage queer living in “Da Hood” during the hey-day of NWA, Boys in the Hood, Dickies, and Gangster rap. Spiderwoman and indeed, until cancellation, her run was a testament that despite being different, “misunderstood,” lost, confused, and a misfit, if you hang in there. You can make it! Hey, cut me some slack, I didn’t even have Oprah!

Well, after stints with various super groups, Avengers, X-men, Shield, a critically acclaimed and popular team up between Jessica Drew and Wolverine, and the much Herald Mike Bendis re-launch my girl IS BACK in all her mysterious ass-kicking glory! Welcome back, Girl. Let the ass kicking begin.