Spider-Woman »

Comic Book

Spider-Man was a huge success to Marvel Comics, so obviously, later on a Distaff Counterpart would be inevitable. No, we're not talking about his daughter from The Clone Saga, Spider-Girl. We're talking about the one Distaff Counterpart conceived way before The Clone Saga. These are what we'd like to call... The Spider-Women.

Compared to other Distaff Counterparts, Spider-Women are rarely an accurate one for Spidey. Most of the time, they possess a set of unique abilities on their own, instead of web-shooters. They also form a small form of Legacy Character pool (while not exactly a big one like Venom or Robin), and occasionally, each form possesses different names, including even Spider-Girl. Although the Spider-Girl in question is NEVER any of the Alternate Universe versions of the original Spider-Man's daughter, with one of them taking the Spider-Woman name later in her career.

See also the other Marvel spider-themed heroines Spider-Girl (from the Prime Marvel universe), Spider-Girl (Earth-982 variant and Peter Parker/Spider-Man's daughter), Spider-Gwen (the Earth-65 variant of Gwen Stacy previously known as Spider-Woman and now known as Ghost-Spider), and Silk.

See also: Spider-Women, a 2016 Bat Family Crossover featuring three Spider-Heroines, including Spider-Women Jessica Drew and Earth-65 Gwen Stacy.

Notable appearances of Spider-Woman

• Spider-Woman (1978) #1-50 (Jessica Drew)
• Spider-Woman (1993) #1-4 (Julia Carpenter)
• Spider-Woman (1999) #1-18 (Mattie Franklin)
• Spider-Woman (2009) #1-7 (Jessica Drew)
• Spider-Woman (2014) #1-10 (Jessica Drew)
• Spider-Woman (2016) #1-17 (Jessica Drew)^note continuation of the 2014 volume
• Spider-Woman (2020) #1-21 (Jessica Drew)
• Spider-Woman (2023) #1-present (Jessica Drew)

Other Comics

• Marvel Spotlight (1971) #32 (first appearance of Jessica Drew)
• Secret Wars (1984) #6 (first appearance of Julia Carpenter)
• Spectacular Spider-Man #263 (first appearance of Mattie Franklin)

Spider-Woman provides examples of:

• Action Girl: All of them, naturally. But special mention goes to Jessica, Julia, and Anya who are also natural fighters on their own. Jessica's trained by Taskmaster, a Badass Teacher himself. Julia is good in hand-to-hand combat for being a government agent. Anya is skilled gymnast and S.H.I.E.L.D. provided her further combat training.
• Animalistic Abilities:
  • Jessica - Spider strength, speed, agility and Wall Crawling. She can also secrete pheromones just like female spiders. Her "venom blast" and Flight are loosely based on how some spiders can fly using the planet's electric field.
  • Julia - Spider strength, speed and agility. Her wall-crawling and Projectile Webbing are psionic-based.
  • After a battle with Charlotte Witter, Mattie not only regained her original powers but also the spider-based abilities Witter had absorbed from the previous two Spider-Women. She could also generate psychic Spider Limbs.
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: Spiders, obviously.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • Jessica Drew - Morgan le Fay, though some may go with Gypsy Moth/Skein or Viper/Madame Hydra.
  • Julia Carpenter - Manipulator; he murdered Julia's ex-husband, Larry, and was the Big Bad of her four-issue miniseries from the early 1990s.
  • Mattie Franklin - Flesh and Bones, though mostly through virtue of being the only recurring baddies in Mattie's predominantly Monster of the Week-based run.
• Chest Insignia: The Spider symbol appears here on the costumes for Julia, Mattie, and Anya, with a few of Jessica's costumes also showing this. Silk uses a spider-web as her chest symbol, while Gwen technically doesn't have a symbol at all, with her spider symbol being the white parts of her suit.
• Crossover: Often with Spider-Man, at times; it's also pivotal to Spidey's development (it created Venom).
• Distaff Counterpart: Somewhat subverted, since none of the Spider-Women have any relation to Peter Parker whatsoever apart from acquaintance. Only Cindy Moon gained her powers from the same exact source, and she has a slightly different power-set (namely organic webs rather than webshooters) in addition to not using the Spider-Woman alias. And while Gwen also got her initial powers from a spider bite and shares the same power set, being her universe's Spider-Man equivalent, she goes on to gain additional abilities thanks to bonding with her dimension's Venom symbiote, on top of abandoning the Spider-Woman alias as well.
  • The Ultimate Marvel version of Jessica Drew is a genuine example of this, being an Opposite-Sex Clone of Peter who emerged intact from the Ultimate Clone Saga.
  • Mattie's reason for becoming Spider-Woman was because she was a Spidey fangirl.
  • Lampshaded in Marvel Ultimate Alliance, where Jessica jokes that she's not Spidey's sister, she's not his cousin that needed a blood transfusion from him, she's never received his powers from him, and they've never dated, although she does find him cute.
• Magnus Means Mage: In Jessica's original series, her ally and mentor Magnus was a sorcerer and former apprentice of Morgan le Fey.
• Most Common Superpower: Except for Mattie, Anya, and Gwen, the Spider-Women are quite busty.
• Ms. Fanservice: Mainly Jessica, but even Julia could be this. Stripperiffic Charlotte also counts.
• Mythology Gag: Jessica was at first assigned with the name "Arachne", then changes it to "Spider-Woman". The reverse happened to Julia (who wanted to be called Arachne from the start).
• Seductive Spider: Invoked in-verse and out of verse due to the well-toned and form-fitting figures of the Spider-Heroines making them notable cases of Dude Magnet, none more so than Jessica whose powerset partially involves using pheromones for seduction.
• Sensual Spandex: Except for Julia, after she gave her costume to Anya. Doubles with Living Clothes for Gwen after she bonds with her universe's Venom symbiote.
• Statuesque Stunner: Both Jessica (5'10") and Julia (5'9").
• Wall Crawl: Just like Spider-Man.