WHO'S GOT A SECRET IN SECRET INVASION? – Episode #3.1 – Spider-Woman
by Bruce! MacIntosh

If you enjoyed the first two issues of Secret Invasion, then you must have gotten a kick out of Number Three. It had had everything needed to keep readers coming back and plunking down their 399 pennies: A frantically-paced story with several splash pages featuring all-out battles between multiple characters; not too much dialogue to get in the way of the images of all the good guys (supposedly) getting killed by the bad guys; and plenty of cheesecake shots of Marvel's hottest superheroine, Spider-Woman. But wait, should fanboys feel revolted that the scarlet-covered backside they are looking up actually belongs to a Skrull? ***SPOILER WARNING***
That's what Secret Invasion's writer, Brian Michael Bendis wants you to think. Although Spider-Woman was the hero who started this whole thing by carrying to Tony Stark the lifeless body of a Skrull who had been posing as Elektra, Bendis wants us to believe that this Jessica Drew is herself dissembled as a green-skinned baddie. As we learned WGASISI? Episode #2, the last page of New Avengers #40 was a doozey, because it seemed to reveal that Spider-Woman was really the Skrull Queen, who had been planted in the superhero community early on in the Skrull Infiltration… Perhaps even years ago.

Then in this issue of Secret Invasion, Spider-Woman appears to kill another hero in cold blood in the Savage Land. She then puts the moves on Tony Stark who is feverishly (literally) attempting to build a new set of armor after Skrull-Jarvis immobilized the Iron Avenger by planting a computer virus in all Stark technology. With her mask down, revealing the face of Jessica Drew and not a Skrull, Spider-Woman keeps going on to the febrile Stark that his "work is done" on Earth and that he now has her undying love as his Skrull Queen.

Is Iron Man a Skrull, too – just waiting for the key words to unlock his hidden identity? Or is this the "real", human Jessica Drew – who is using her spider-pheromones to test the weakened Tony Stark. Or are they both Skrulls, or both human – and this entire exchange is just another red herring to throw readers off the trail? I'm getting a headache. While I hit the medicine cabinet…

***END SPOILER WARNING***
Jessica Drew's history and origins are almost as confusing as the above questions, and although I don't know whether her hair color is currently green, I can tell you that in all of her various origins it was originally a lovely shade of brown – possibly even auburn. Why is that particularly important? Well – it isn't, but in this Episode of WGASISI?, that is about the closest I can get to a knockout "reveal" that makes Secret Invasion itself so exciting. Wait! I've got one:

Jessica Drew was originally not human, but an evolved spider! Ewww.

Somebody at Marvel must have also thought that origin distasteful, because they quickly altered it. But before we get to the revised origin, let's consider the fascinating circumstances surrounding the character's creation in the first place, way back in Marvel Spotlight #32 (Feb 1977).
Whenever you see a Golden- or Silver-Age character suddenly return to comics after so many years out of the spotlight, you can bet that the company's legal copyrights and trademarks are due to expire. You see, after a certain number of years of disuse (not appearing in print for the public to see) a character, trade name or trade mark may fall into what is called the "public domain". This means that a company like Marvel will no longer have exclusive rights to use those characters – anyone can! This might also explain, for example, two recent Marvel series – The Twelve or Avengers/Invaders, which resurrects – however briefly – certain Golden Age characters.

This also explains why Marvel lost the rights to the name "The Champions" to a gaming company, and had to pull out of their butts the dubious title of The Order for their California Avengers Initiative team book. Another infamous example is DC's loss of "Captain Marvel" due to failure to use the appellation after acquiring all of Fawcett Comics' properties. Since DC was asleep at the switch, Marvel was able to rob that train and that's they can have their Captain Marvel busting into Thunderbolts Mountain in Colorful Colorado, and beat up… Ah, well, I digress.
The other of the Big Two comic companies is legendary for whipping up new characters with names only tangentially related to another of their properties. DC's desire to "reserve" a character name and prevent the competition from getting it, led to the creation of "Super-Woman" in an early Lois Lane title. And, naturally, that is how Marvel weaved the tangled web that is Spider-Woman back in the mid 70s.

Marvel Spotlight: More Spider than Woman
Writer Dan Johnson did the legwork for an excellent retrospective of the alluring arachnid for Back Issue Magazine #20 (Aug 2006). In "Marvel's Dark Angel: Back Issue Gets Caught in Spider-Woman's Web", Dan quotes Roger Stern, one-time Editor for that character's book, regarding Marvel's rush to create the character: "The only reason that Spider-Woman was created in the first place was to prevent another company from ripping off Spider-Man with a female version for a Saturday-morning cartoon series." (The cartoon maker Filmation eventually went with "Web Woman" instead.) "Someone – it might have been Stan Lee – found out that a rival Spider-Woman cartoon series was in the works, and to protect the name for Marvel, [longtime writer and briefly Marvel's Editor-In-Chief] Archie Goodwin quickly came up with our own Spider-Woman character…"

Johnson also solved the mystery that had haunted Spider-Woman fans for decades: "Who created her costume? Marvel's production maven and accomplished comic artist in her own right, Marie Severin revealed the answer: "Johnny [Romita] and I would be in on the innovative things, to start off [new characters], and then they would be assigned to an artist for a story… The artists could change anything they wanted as long as they discussed it with Stan [Lee]."
In Spider-Woman's original and hastily-composed origin story, she was simply a spider evolved into human form by the High Evolutionary. This guy was famous for creating anthropomorphic beings –which he called his New Men – often having humanoid bodies and animal heads. The aptly-named Spider-Woman was apparently one of his first experiments with either spiders or women.

Archie Goodwin's first story – illustrated by Sal Buscema and the late Jim Mooney – showed SW sent by Hydra to infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters and assassinate Nick Fury . Readers also saw her fall for fellow Hydra agent, Jared. Even a woman who is really a spider can apparently have her head turned by a smooth-talking lothario, because Jared was truly repulsed by her and was only doing it to cloud her judgment while she continued to work for the villainous group.
Before she could snap Fury's neck, the wily secret agent was able to activate a tape of Jared and Hydra's brutality and duplicity. The red-clad arachnid fled the S.H.I.E.L.D. base, vowing to take revenge against her devious former Hydra patriarch, Count Otto Vermis. Knowing that Hydra hath no fury like a spider-woman scorned and that she could go more damage to the evil organization, Fury let her go. Using her spider-derived agility and speed, she did catch up with Vermis. Before escaping, the Hydra leader revealed the woman's true origin – a memory previously repressed.

Because she appeared perfectly human, the High Evolutionary's other "New Men" ostracized Jessica Drew, causing her to flee to the neighboring countryside of Wundagore. Away from the secluded compound, she developed amnesia. She fit in well in the vaguely-Balkan land and even fell in love, until her real genetic origins percolated to the top and she accidentally blasted her beau with a deadly Spider-blast. This is when Hydra snapped her up to reprogram her and use her abilities for its own nefarious purposes.

Upon learning her creepy origins, and just how much – and how often – she had been brainwashed and duped into serving evil purposes , the demoralized and as-yet unnamed woman wandered off amongst the trees of her dubiously Eastern European homeland. Marvel succeeded in telling a pretty good story, creating a smoking-hot heroine for teenaged fanboys to ogle, securing the copy rights to the name "Spider-Woman", and that was that.
Until, apparently, the sales results from that issue of Marvel Spotlight turned out positive, and it is conceivable that those fanboys mailed in some positive letters to Marvel editorial. They decided to test out the character again.

Marvel Two-In-One: More Woman than Spider

Next, Spider-Woman battled against – and then with – the Thing in his team-up comic, Marvel Two-In-One #29 – 33 (Jul – Nov 1977). Initially, Jessica had been recaptured by Hydra and was again under the group's control. They forced a Dr. Kort to replicate the formula which had originally "created" her. (This, in turn, revised the circumstances of that creation.)
All the action in this multi-issue guest appearance in the Thing's team-up book, took place across the pond in Merry Old England. By story's conclusion, Mordred the Mystic revealed to Jessica that the belief that she was merely an evolved spider had only been a notion implanted in her mind by Hydra. She was, indeed, human – according to the ancient sorcerer – which made her automatically eligible for her own comic series!

Spider-Woman (Volume 1)
When Spider-Woman's popularity took off after only those few appearances, Marvel decided to take a flyer on the character. "I decided on my own to keep her as far away from Spider-Man as I could," said the book's writer, Marv Wolfman. " I wanted her to have her own reason for being and not cheapen Spider-Man by replicating his origin or his purpose and character. I began to develop the Jessica Drew Character, named ultimately after my daughter Jessica and Nancy Drew."

In Johnson's enlightening article, Wolfman disclosed, "The comic Archie Goodwin wrote sold better than anyone expected… I was asked to take this character who was created to be a one-shot and turn her into a regular book…. Spider-Woman was an evolved spider, and back in the mid-'70s that would not have flown. I had to take what Archie did and spin a new story around it so she could be human."
Now, Jessica was born 100% human, her father being scientist Jonathan Drew. When she was only an infant, her parents had moved her from her birth country of England to the Uranium-rich land of Wundagore. Unfortunately, the element that gave her father the financial resources to carry on his life-extending experiments, also gave young Jessica radioactive poisoning by the time she was 8 years old. Her father then used his spider-derived regenerative formula to cure her, and attempted to intensify the curative effects with a genetic accelerator invented by Dr. Herbert Wyndham.

Her parents disappeared while Jessica was in stasis within the device, until she emerged decades having aged only to apparently 14 years old. Wyndham – now calling himself the High Evolutionary – took her under his wing, and appointed to her care Bova, an evolved cow-woman. Again, she was shunned by her fellow New Men – for being just a little too human, and she was sent out to the mean streets of Wundagore.
Here, Wolfman planted the seeds of a new "power", which has been used to varying degrees over the years, and is almost certainly in play in Spider-Woman's encounter with Tony Stark in Secret Invasion #3. While out in the real world, poor Jessica learned that many humans inexplicably fear and detest her – especially females. With men, however, she can emit some form of pheromone which affects their judgment and allows her to control them. (Insert ironic comment about "real life" here.)

This is where Count Otto Vermis and his wing of Hydra picked her up and conditioned her to believe and train for their cause – ostensibly because they convinced her that she was really a spider and would never find acceptance in man's world. She was codenamed Arachne and fought for the evil organization Nick Fury persuaded her otherwise.

With the first issue of Spider-Woman #1 (Apr 1978) – illustrated by the incomparable Carmine Infantino until #19 (when he returned to DC to do the Flash) – Jessica puttered around London, battling villains like Morgan LeFey and Brother Grimm. Eventually she took off for the States to locate her father. From the first issue, Marv Wolfman suggested to Infantino that he modify the character's headdress to allow her hair to flow free. This alteration definitely made the character more attractive, and probably didn't hurt sales, either.
The Spider-Woman series lasted for only 50 issues until it was canceled due to consistently-dwindling sales. A frequent shift in writers and artists made the storytelling inconsistent - a recipe for reader abandonment. In the process, however, the Jessica Drew character was firmly entrenched in the Marvel Universe, as were the characters in her rogues gallery, such as Hammer and Anvil, Silver Samurai, the Brothers Grimm, Hangman and the Enforcer. (The latter trio would go on to haunt Mockingbird until her final adventure, as discussed in the last Episode (2.1) of Who's Got a Secret in Secret Invasion?)

The cancellation of Spider –Woman's first comic series was not the end of her character. She continued to appear for 20 years in other comics, and in the last three years has played an active role in Marvel's Civil War and now, Secret Invasion. In fact, we will see in Part II of our Spider-Woman analysis in just a few days – Jessica Drew may just be the key to the entire Skrull infiltration. The question: Is she on the side of the heroes or the creepy green aliens that want to kill us all?