Spider-Woman 7 review

As enjoyable as the Spider-Women crossover is so far, it’s weird that Jessica Drew is missing from a good number of issues. From a storytelling standpoint it makes sense for the second act – she’s just going home to take care of her newborn son, but showing up in the last issue for a cliffhanger ending wouldn’t have been too bad. This issue finally catches us up with what’s going on in Jessica Drew’s world.

Written by Dennis Hopeless, Spider-Woman 7 has the title character meeting up with her Earth-65 counterpart, Jesse Drew. It’s a very well written meeting that shows that while Jesse doesn’t live as noble of a life as Jessica, he’s not a bad person. After a brief fight they actually get along quite well, despite their ideological differences. In the meantime, there’s a bit of story development, mostly from Gwen Stacy’s investigation into who Jesse Drew is and his relations to Earth-65’s Cindy Moon. His backstory is an interesting twist on Jessica’s, with her parents being secret agents based on the moon, one of them being a double agent. Gwen Stacy has her own good character moment, and once again, Jessica is a great mentor for her, giving her something to think about while still leaving the final choice up to her. The comic is relatively straight forward, but with such a deep character focus, that’s perfectly fine.

The art by Joelle Jones is great. Jesse looks like a male version of Jessica, and their facial expressions are even similar. The brief fight scene flows very well, and the damage they cause to Jessica’s apartment sticks around for the rest of the issue in the backgrounds. The flashback about Jesse’s past is complete with some great lunar scenery and a great science fiction look to the moon base, and although the text explains most of the story, the art adds a lot to it. Rachelle Rosenberg’s colouring is also great. It’s a bright and colourful comic, with some great shading effects for shadows and lighting when the Drews use their blasts. The flashbacks are shaded blue, which is appropriate for scenes that take place on the moon.

This is a weirdly paced crossover, but that doesn’t make it bad. So far it’s been fun, with some great character moments for all three of the Spider-Women, and a good look at the Earth-65 versions of both Cindy Moon and Jessica Drew. If this issue’s ending is of any indication, next week’s Spider-Women Omega should be pretty intense. Fans of any of the Spider-Women characters should give this crossover a chance and if you’re reading more than one of these titles, you might as well pick it up.

8/10