Monday Review: Spider-Woman #1
She may be a mom-to-be, but she’s still Spider-Woman.
Thing is, Jessica Drew never wanted to be a mom. And while she’s accepted the fact it’s about to happen, has made her peace with it, she has some doubts.
She has to give up her motorcycle. She has to watch other people, people she has trained and others who are her friends, hero while she stays in the car (or on it in some cases). Men (albeit friends) feel free to ask about the father and to comment on her body (as someone who was asked “are you sure there’s only one in there” several times during each of her two pregnancies, let me assure you it’s annoying as fuck and you start counting the ways you could dismember the asker slowly and most painfully).
Jessica is used to her body being public property because she chooses to use it in the service of the pubic, not because having a baby bump makes a woman fair game for patting and prodding and fondling.
Even acceptance doesn’t make everything okay.
She is tired. She is bored. She is lonely.
And she isn’t really Spider-Woman anymore. Not the way she wants to be.
I loved this issue. The art is sharp and clean; the characters, especially Jessica and Carol, are at their witty, snarky best. There is a hell of a lot of girl power what with Captain Marvel acting the mother hen and Gwen Stacy and Natasha Romanoff doing their damnedest to keep their girl out of trouble.
What I loved most, however, was the honesty.
For a great majority of comic history, children were either a device of the same magnitude as the woman in the refrigerator or pretty accessories that appeared and effectively raised themselves while mom and dad swanned off to do whatever it was mom and dad did. Which isn’t to say the children of superheroes aren’t loved. Many of them are, or so it’s been claimed.
Even loved, however, they simply aren’t realistic.
Children don’t change, feed, or educate themselves. They shouldn’t play with radiation or particle accelerators. They cannot pilot aircraft or space craft or scooters or boats. They are adorable, helpless little lumps who can’t even lift their heads for several weeks after birth. They make a lot of noise and a lot of mess and even if you’re completely prepared, you’re not.
Everything changes.
Everything changes even if you’re a normal person with a normal job living a normal life. Imagine what it would be like if you were a flipping’ superhero. If your job, your passion, was charging into danger to save the lives of others and then, suddenly, you had another life to consider, alife that counted on you not only for love and parenting but for its most basic survival.
Whether or not you want kids and Jessica, despite the imminent spawning, isn’t sure she does, there are doubts. Those doubts, however, are one of those Things We Don’t Talk About. All parents, but especially mums to be, are supposed to be blissfully happy, waddling along to newborn, pretending everything is perfect.
We don’t admit we’re going to miss sleeping in or binge tv weekends or kicking bank robber ass. That would be selfish. Eating what we want instead of what tiny dictators demand, drinking our coffee hot, avenging stuff because, well, when you’re a parent, you just have to give things up, don’t you.
Yes. You do.
But you can love your children to the ends of the world and still lament elements of the life you had before. Hell, you can love your kids and miss the whole damn thing.
Everyone has doubts. But if you even start to mention them, you get a, “You’ll be great,” or, “it will be fine,” or “everyone worries and you all turned out okay.” Because bunnies and puppies and fucking rubber duckies or it all goes to hell, right?
But what if you’re not? What if it’s not? What if it doesn’t?
One of the times we most need support, most need acceptance, need love and it’s one of the times we’re most likely to be casually put off or shut down.
Jessica Drew is honest about all of it. She is honest without hesitation or remorse. With her friends. With herself.
Imagine that.
I’ll be curious to see what happens as the series progresses but, for now, I’m all in.
Four and a half out of five fingers on the hand of glory for Spider-Woman #1 (2015)
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