Spider-Woman, Agent of S.W.O.R.D.

[fajrdrako]

Read a great graphic novel today: Spider-Woman, Agent of S.W.O.R.D.. No, it's not new - my new comics are sitting unread by my bed. It's by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev, the writer/artist combination who did such a great job with Daredevil.

Spider-Woman had always seemed bland to me before. Not here: Bendis takes all the terrible things that happened to her in her life, and makes that his theme - that, and her search for her own purpose and identity, after having been captured by Skrulls and replaced by an impostor. Jessica narrates her own story:

Okay, I'll come clear with you. I'm not... well, I'll just come right out and say it. I'm not in a good place at the moment. I'm having a real honest-to-goodness crisis of faith. Faith in myself, faith in the world, faith in... faith.

And I just keep thinking about Wolverine. Yes. The X-Man Wolverine. The Avenger Wolverine. I've known him off and on a long time, and every time I run into him I think: "Wow. There's the most screwed-over person in the history of the universe."

Hated as a mutant, captured and tortured by not one government but two... Eperimented on... Poked and prodded just to see what would happen if you poked and prodded him.

I look at Wolverine and I wonder: "How could he even function knowing he is the most screwed-over person in the history of the universe?"

...Yeah. Congratulations, Wolverine... You are no longer the most screwed-over human in the history of the entire world.

Coming in at number one...

Damn it.

Jessica goes to Madripoor on a mission for Abigail Brand. Hydra wants her - especially Madame Hydra, who sees herself as Jessica's mother. The law wants her. And the plot just gets thicker and thicker. It's a very satisfying comic, and Jessica's personality here isn't bland for a minute.

This graphic novel reprints the seven issues that were all there was of the Spider-Woman comic, because Alex Maleev was making it into a motion comic, and burned out. That's a shame, because I really don't care that there's a motion comic - I greatly prefer paper comics to motion comics. Though we do get a rather good music vid.

And the story has a very good ending. Beautifully written.

Interestingly, the next project Bendis turned to was Scarlet, a comic about a young woman screwed over by corrupt authority, who takes her fate into her own hands; a comic written with first person narrative in very much the style of Spider-Woman. I love Scarlet (and talked about it on Jan. 31, would I rather still have Spider-Woman? I think I might, because of the inclusion of the other wonderful characters of the Marvel universe.