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hellomystraightlacedfriend · 2 years

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Queercoding: The Case of Jessica Drew (aka Spider-Woman) - Part One (Pre-Secret Invasion)

(Spider-Woman Vol. 1, #21/Writer: Michael Fleisher/Art: Frank Springer/Published: September 4, 1979)

🕷Introduction:

In antipation of Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman being adapted in Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse (she's been a fave of mine for a while now) and her possibly making an appearance in the MCU because of the whole Secret Invasion thing, I've been reading through a lot of Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew) comics, and the thing is there is so much queer subtext in all her series- including her original late 70s - early 80s solo series - that I think a good portion of it had to be premeditated.

That said, this isn't a I'm-going-to-be-mad-if-this-doesn’t-show-up-in-the-Across-the-Spiderverse post. I'm planning to enjoy that movie regardless. I just thought it was really interesting.

[Oh, for those of you who saw and expressed interest in me doing an analysis on Harry Osborn, I'm still planning to do that. Not the Parksborn thing (because I'm too depressed about the present state of their relationship), but I do want to do something with Norman and Harry. I'm just trying to figure out how to format it.]

Anyway, because this post is already going to be long, gonna start now. I'm including a little back story for Jess, because she's not the most well-known character.

So, without further ado...

Who is Jessica Drew?

Well, to put it briefly, Jessica Drew was the child of a close associate of the High Evolutionary and raised on Wundagore Mountain. As a toddler, she was saved from uranium poisoning by being given a serum made from the blood of several different species of spiders. She was then put in cryogenic hibernation, while her body healed and her new genetics fused with the old. When she woke, she was ten years old, had spider-related powers, and her parents were gone. The High Evolutionary said he would be her father but was a very neglectful 'dad.' When he bothered paying attention to her at all, he treated her more like an interesting experiment than a child/person. The animals the High Evolutionary had evolved into more sentient/intelligent beings also ignored/rejected Jess because she wasn’t like them.

Important Takeway: Jess had a very isolated childhood where she faced a lot of rejection. This being rejected from a young age and her feelings of being an outsider are an important part of her character and something to keep in mind when examining the decisions she makes later. (Also, kinda important, unlike Peter Parker, she doesn't have any kind of spidey-sense to warn her of danger.)

But to continue, some time in her teens, Jess - driven by loneliness - left Wundagore to seek out other human beings. While this went fine for a bit, it ended disastrously. When startled by a prank, Jess accidentally unleashed a venom blast on the young man she was seeing. It killed him.

Jess was then rescued from a murdererous mob by a member of Hydra and manipulated into working for them. They trained her to be a fighter and a spy, but when she was sent to assassinate Nick Fury, he was able to show her evidence that Hydra was not as good as they claimed to be, and Jess left Hydra behind. (Marvel Spotlight #32 & Spider-Woman (1978) #37.)

Jess' First Solo Series 👊

(Spider-Woman #3/Writer: Marv Wolfman/Artist: Carmine Infantino/Published: March 7, 1978)

Jess's first solo series, Spider-Woman, follows soon after she leaves Hydra. She's now starving in London, because she is unable to find any kind of work. Both because she doesn't have any kind of normal experience and skills and because there is something about her presence that greatly unsettles people.

However, she does manage to make friends with an ancient sorcerer named Magnus, who becomes her mentor, and one of the first things she learns from him is that women and men can't be just friends. (Yep, she leaves isolation and bumps into comphet.)

Jess moves to L.A. (to find out information about her missing murdered father) where she runs into S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jerry Hunt. (She'd bumped into him before when she was not stealing food in London.)

I found the dialogue (from issue #6) between them interesting, so I am putting it down here:

Jess: Why do you keep calling me 'gorgeous?' Why have you followed me here?

Hunt: Don't ask me to explain any of this, but when I saw you in London something I didn’t know was in me - stirred. There's something about you. Something about you that makes me feel I know you. Something that makes me love you!

Jess: Love? Are you crazy, man? You don't even know who or what I am.

The emphasised 'what' is the writer Marv Wolfman's, not mine. Now Jerry Hunt already knows that Jess has superpowers. What I think Jess is talking about is the nature of her powers because she has been led to believe that the spider genetics in her body make her subhuman. She is ashamed of her nature, which she has come to see as dark and creepy.

Something about Jess both deeply attracts and disturbs most men, while most women are repulsed by her. Which is very distessing to Jess because she desperately wants other women to like her.

(Note: given that this was written by men in the US during the 1970s when the Comics Code Authority and Editor-in-chief of Marvel Jim Shooter expressly prohibited gay and lesbian characters, I do think this could be a metaphor for lesbianism, but there’s more to come.)

Jerry Hunt at least is not afraid of her. Jess starts a relationship with him. It quickly sours though, as he hates her double life as Spider-Woman, and by issue #9 (written by a new writer Mark Gruenwald) Jess is questioning whether she actually loves Hunt.

Then in issue #10 something interesting happens:

(Spider-Woman #10/Writer: Mark Gruenwald/Art: Carmine Infantino/Published: October 3, 1978)

For the first time in her life, Jess sees another person with powers in person, and she is mesmerized. Pulling away from a kiss she wasn’t into to begin with, Jess pulls on her 'gaudy raimant' aka Spider-Woman costume and takes off after the flying woman, 'a figure of unnatural beauty.'

However, even with her glider webs, Jess is unable to catch up because the winds are wrong. She laments, 'I don't think she even saw me!'

When she returns to Hunt, he is furious. He asks her if she is going to chase after 'every flying freak' she sees and then tells her he is taking her home. Jess is quiet, but in her head, she thinks about how Jerry Hunt doesn't understand what it's like to be different.

Later that night, Jess is (lonely) at a party when the flying woman from earlier starts vandalising the club and binding the party goers with their own clothing - using her mutant ability to control fibers.

Jess chases after her, but the flying woman (Sybil Dvorak) perceives this as an attack and starts unravelling Jess's Spider-Woman costume, using the threads to swing Jess hard and away from her. But Jess glides after Sybil again. She throws herself between the other woman's thighs and clasps onto her, pleading with Sybil to listen, saying that they ought to be friends because they have so much in common.

Sybil, however, rejects Jess (saying that she has no friends) and tries to drown Jess in the club's swimming pool. Jerry Hunt shows up when Jess is coming up out of the water, and he shoots Sybil, much to Jess' horror. Jess blasts Hunt (nonfatally) with her venom and carries the wounded Sybil away into the woods, so she won't be taken in by the authorities.

When Sybil regains consciousness, she (silently) rejects Jess again. Despite this, Jess still feels that she has more in common with this mutant she just met than with anyone else. She returns to Jerry Hunt, but they are both angry with each other.

The issue ends with the question: Jerry Hunt and Jessica Drew...two people...in love?

It's not surprising then that they break up three issues later, much to Jess' relief.

💞Enter Lindsay McCabe 💞

(Spider-Woman #14/Writer: Mark Gruenwald/Art: Carmine Infantino/Published: January 30, 1979)

After Jerry's departure, Jess concentrates her efforts even more into finding a stable job. She's been getting placements through a temping agency but no one is willing to give her a permanent position. Jess hears about a free trial at a psychiatric clinic and decides to see if the therapists can tell her why she can't get people to like her.

After the free session, she is asked to come again weekly. When she says she can't because she doesn't have a job or any means to pay, she is offered a job as a receptionist. (This is for an ulterior reason as the mutant Nekra, who is running the clinic, knows that it is Jess' powerful pheromones that are affecting people, and she wants to isolate that factor to create an immunizing pill against superpowered pheromone users.)

In addition to one-on-one interactions with a psychiatrist, Jess attends group therapy. However, the other participants are put off by Jessica's presence, except for one woman: Lyndsay McCabe.

Jess is surprised when Lyndsay asks to be her partner during a session. Afterwards, Jess wants to get closer to Lyndsay, but something always seems to get in the way.

Meanwhile, (Spider-Woman #17-18) a doctor at the clinic tells Jess that her problems with people seem more biological than psychological and gives her a pill to suppress the pheromones that are coming from body. He tells her to test it out in a vigorous social situation.

Jess goes to a disco/night club. She is happy to find that the woman who takes her cover charge shows no sign of dislike or disgust. However, Jess ponders her choice of a single's bar, wondering if her relationships with men have any meaning or if she is just trying to fill a void because she can't stand being alone with herself.

She lets these thoughts slide through when a man approaches who is 'not bad looking at all.' 'Eric' teaches Jess to dance, and they spend the evening together. However, she tenses up when he parks instead of taking her directly home. When Jess tells Eric that she has to work early the next morning, Eric complains that he is lonely. Then he goes on and goes on about how miserable he is, how he gets rejected all the time, how he just needs to be held, until Jess (out of pity and naivety) finally relents and lets him kiss her.

However, when he does, his flesh falls from his face and across hers like 'warm wet worms.' This doesn't kill Eric. It's just a condition he suffers from every time he gets, um, excited.

Horrified, Jess flees from Eric. Reflecting afterwards that it was 'the most repulsive thing that I've ever experienced.'

Note: I was too distracted by the body horror to think about this, but a male reviewer immediately saw this as a metaphor for ejaculation, which makes a lot of sense. The reviewer didn’t, however, understand why sex was being presented in such a disturbing way.

This same man noted in a review for an earlier issue of Spider-Woman that Jerry Hunt's great frustration with Jess never letting him drive her home had to do with him being denied opportunities to get physically intimate with her.

Strangely, this man noticed Jess' disinterest in having sex with her boyfriends/dates and the female homoerotism in the series, but never once connected the two. This man brushed Jess' aversion aside as prudishness - without taking into consideration that she might genuinely not want to be with a man. Whereas, he saw the homoerotism in the series purely as male fanservice.

But anyway, Jess later learns that 'Eric' smothered another woman to death with his flesh. When Jess goes to confront him about it, she ends up killing 'Eric' in self-defence.

This is shortly after Jess' boss attempted to murder her and wound up in a coma (when Jess lost control during their fight, entering a state of frenzied dissociation).

Reeling from these two back-to-back incidents, Jess can't hide her inner turmoil in group therapy. The other participants demand that she open up to them. Jess, however, just breaks down sobbing, repeating, over and over again, that she can't tell. (Because she can't tell without revealing her secret identity.)

Lindsay McCabe takes charge of the situation, ridiculing the other participants for picking on Jessica because 'some people have more things to work out than others.' She takes Jess back to her own apartment and makes her tea. The two of them talk for hours. Lindsay then offers to let Jess stay the night because she doesn't think Jess should be alone. Jess gladly accepts, happy to finally have a woman to call 'friend!'

(Spider-Woman #19/Writer: Steven Grant, Mark Gruenwald/Art: Carmine Infantino/Published: July 3, 1979.)

Jessica Drew: Bounty Hunter?💀

Before leaving Spider-Woman behind, writer Mark Gruenwald gave his successor a problem to solve: Jess is now homeless and unemployed (she lost her job because new magement didn't want her.) What will she do now?

New writer Michael Fleisher's very controversial decision was to make her a bounty hunter. The hate mail during this period of Spider-Woman (#21 -#32) was intense.

While I can't say the writing was phenomenal, I did find some of the elements of this run interesting. First of all, Jess/Spider-Woman had already been dealing with cults and serial killers - we have that whole L.A. in the 1970s thing going on - so it makes sense that she'd move to getting paid to track down dangerous criminals when she literally had no money and no other job prospects.

Also, I liked the conflict between Jessica Drew and her bounty hunter partner, paraplegic criminologist Scotty McDowell. Basically, he was obsessive, and she wasn’t. He was doing all the research, but he needed her to physically get the crinimals. And she'd frustrate Scotty by prioritising getting victims to safety over getting the bad guy every time. Sometimes, she'd also blow off Scotty to spend time with Lindsay, as the two women became increasingly close. Which brings us to -

OKAY, BUT MAKE IT GAY-ER: CHRIS CLAREMONT

(From Spider-Woman #35 & 39/Writer: Chris Claremont/Art: Steve Leialoha.)

When Claremont took over the series from Fleisher, his first order of business was doing away with the bounty hunter angle. He also decided that Jess should move city to San Francisco, so she could stay with Lindsay, and they could be roommates in the gayest city in America. Once there, Jess does start a romantic relationship with their young and charming landlord David Ishima, but things quickly become more...blurred.

But before I get into that, I want to talk a little about Lindsay. Girl is a 20-something unknown actress who loves clothes and is an adrenaline junkie. She also has posters of the Chorus Line, and noted bisexual actress Marlene Dietrich up on her wall.

A lot else of Lindsay is left...vague. We know that Lindsay has opened up to Jess and told her all her secrets - it's one reason why Jess feels so guilty for not telling Lindsay about being Spider-Woman. Readers are, however, left in the dark about these secrets.

There is also a scene where Jess wakes up from dreaming that Lindsay is being burnt at the stake and goes to check on her. When she does, it's implied that someone is in bed with Lindsay, but the gender/identity of that person is not disclosed.

Interestingly, Lindsay also has a 'nightmare' (caused by a supervillian) that involves burning. She has become 'beautiful, like a living star.' She wants to share her joy with Jess, but when she touches Jess, her fiery touch consumes and destroys her best friend.

Meanwhile, Jess is finding that she's having to take more and more pills to suppress her pheromones effectively. Jess' other powers are also affected, making her adventures as Spider-Woman more dangerous. Jess also fears that the pills themselves might kill her. Still, she keeps taking them.

Then in issue #41, Morgan Le Fay shows up and tells Jess, 'You're not in love with your boyfriend. You're gay for your roommate, Lindsay McCabe, but you should be gay for me. Also, you're kind of demon possessed, and I'm your only hope, so swear you'll be mine forever?'

(Spider-Woman #41/Writer: Chris Claremont/Art: Steve Leialoha. Published: August 25, 1981)

Okay, so those aren’t her exact words, but what she is saying and acting out boils down to that. Morgan Le Fay, who is a recurring Spider-Woman villian, wants Jess to join her side and be her...um, love slave (Claremont is pretty into the whole BDSM thing in his writings.)

But instead of just saying this right off the bat, Morgan makes Jess and her two best friends - the term Jess uses for both David and Lindsay - play this Star Trek style role play game where they become the characters.

It's reenactment of a scene from Morgan's past. Jess plays Morgan, who is consumed with jealousy because Gweneviere (played by Lindsay) and Lancelot (played by David) are in love, and she wants Lancelot for herself. Jess, lost in the enchantment, casts a spell that allows the infedility to be discovered.

Because Guinevere is Queen, her crime is considered one of treason, and she is sentenced to be burnt at the stake. Now in the story Lancelot is the one who is supposed to save Guinevere, but it is Jess, snapping out of the enchantment, who runs to Lindsay's rescue - taking on the masculine role of Lancelot.

It also becomes apparent as the real Morgan holds Lindsay hostage that this 'triangle' that she's presenting has nothing to do with David. What Morgan is trying to convey is that she (Morgan) desires Lancelot (Jess), and if she can't have Jess, she will kill the woman Jess loves - Lindsay.

Jess almost yields to Morgan's wishes, both because she is afraid for Lindsay's life and because she's scared for herself, not knowing how to deal with the whole demon/elder god possession thing on her own. (I'll explain in brief later.) But she decides that she has fought too hard for her freedom (from Hydra, the High Evolutionary) to be controlled by anyone else.

She manages to distract Morgan with a venom blast and then stabs her through the chest, severing Morgan from her plane of reality. Morgan disappears and the spell is broken. Only Jess remembers what happened.

Confessions, the End, and After

(Spider-Woman #43/Writer: Chris Claremont/Art: Steve Leialoha. Published: December 29, 1981)

Back to reality, Jess has a case to work - oh, FYI, she's a private investigator now. A young woman comes to her asking to help find her father, who has disappeared. Jess leaves the young woman with Lindsay for safe keeping. Unfortunately, it was Hydra who took the father, and they're interested in the daughter, too. Viper, aka Madame Hydra, comes to Jess' house and winds up in a fight with Lindsay, who was trying to keep Jess' client safe. Both women end up falling from the roof, and while Viper escapes unharmed, Lindsay ends up in critical condition.

Jess races to see Lindsay in the hospital, blaming herself for putting Lindsay in danger. She then confesses to being Spider-Woman, to which Lindsay replies:

That's your dramatic revelation? Twit, I've known that one for months.

Filled with rage, Jess takes her still boyfriend David's motorcycle and tracks down Viper. The two woman fight and fall into the ocean. Jess grabs Viper's throat and starts choking her.

However, as she's losing consciousness, Viper smiles as if she wants to die. Jess stops strangling her. When Jess confronts Viper about why she's loyal to Hydra, Viper says that years ago, she was just as defiant as Jess. It's then revealed that Viper has been possessed by the demon/elder god Chthon, and Chthon is now coming for Jess to make her his so he can live through her on earth. (When Jess was in artificial hibernation as a child on Wundagore Mountain, Chthon, whose essence was trapped in the mountain, buried a part of himself deep in Jess' soul.)

In a twist that shocks Jess, Viper helps Jess break free from Chthon's hold and manages to banish Chthon temporarily from their reality. Viper laughs, and Jess realises that this woman is her mother. But then Viper vanishes into the night - leaving Jess alive but alone.

The following issue is more comedic, as we see Jess working a strange case and Lindsay recovering from the attack. Lindsay also looks at Jess like this when Jess tries on more P.I. 'appropriate' clothes:

(Spider-Woman #45/Writer: Chris Claremont/Art: Steve Leialoha. Published: April 27, 1982)

In Issue #49, written by yet another writer, Ann Nocenti, Jess runs into Sybil Dvorak again. Sybil is now the leader of a cult. (We do find out her backstory here. She was an undocumented immigrant, who had been living a miserable life - both controlled and neglected by her Hollywood husband. The reason why she had been attacking the party the first time she met Jess was because she was furious that her husband was living this life out in the world without her.)

When Jess confronts Sybil about drugging and controlling people, Sybil tries drowning Jess again. She feels guilty about it though, as Jess had offered her friendship before. Jess is able to escape from the water, by yanking hard at her hair, effectively cutting it short.

Later that day, when David is recovering from his girlfriend now having short hair, Jess confesses to him that she's Spider-Woman. David is shocked speachless.

Then in Issue #50, Jess is taking a shower while Lindsay makes them breakfast when Jess suddenly disappears. She wakes up in a prison cell in her Spider-Woman costume. She soon finds that her captor is a man named Locksmith who is locking up people with powers. When she demands an explanation, Locksmith says:

I am doing society a favor by eliminating all its deviants.

When Jess says she isn't a deviant, Locksmith insists that she and her ilk are. Others in the prison include people Jess knows like Tigra and Jack Russel, Werewolf by Night. Sybil Dvorak is also there, and Jess ends up teaming up with her to get them out. Afterwards, Jess brings the other super people back to her house.

David finally confronts Jess, telling her he thinks they should break up, as he wants to date a 'normal' woman. Jess mourns the end of their relationship, wondering if it was just 'a joke, nothing at all.'

But she is then distracted when her old mentor Magnus takes over David's body. Magnus reveals to her that he has always been a ghost and that the only way he can stay in Jess' world is through taking over other people's bodies. He tells Jess that Morgan Le Fay is planning to attack her and that they need to go astrally back in time to the 6th century to destroy Morgan's body before she can.

Jess agrees. During her fight with Morgan, Morgan encourages Jess to embrace her dark side, saying:

You are of my world. It will be your privilege to die by my hand.

Unfortunately for Morgan, Jess runs with this idea, embracing and accepting every part of herself.

She tells Morgan: Yes, I am dark! I'm unbeatable, unstoppable dark! Watch me, Morgan! A shadow you cannot get rid of!

Jess finally fully embraces her spider-side, seeing it as a strength rather than a weakness. She manages to destroy Morgan's physical body, but when she returns to her own physical body, she finds it cold and still - Morgan's last act of revenge.

And this, my friends, was meant to be Jessica Drew's final fate. Marvel had cancelled the series with no intention of picking the character up again. Because of this writer Ann Nocenti and former writer/now editor Mark Gruenwald decided it would be interesting and 'realistic' to kill her off.

So, Jess had her hair shortened, 'came out,' broke up with her boyfriend, finally accepted herself, and then immediately died.

However, there was a lot of backlash against Jess' death, and because of this, Jess was brought back. When she was brought back though in Avengers #241, someone decided that Jess' body should have radical changes in its chemistry and that she was now a 'normal' woman. The Avengers - who mostly don't know her - gather around Jess, smiling Stepford wives' smiles, while Lindsay is notably absent.

I'm sorry, but I do really think this was Marvel saying: she can be straight and alive, or dead and gay.

Pictured below: whatever the fuck this is:

(Above: Panels from Wolverine (1988) by Chris Claremont and John Buscema.)

Marvel was not going to give Jess another solo series. She did appear as a supporting character, along with Lindsay, in Claremont's Wolverine (1988) series. Jess had met the X-Men in her solo series, and they had extended an open invitation to join the team. Claremont, thus, writes Jess and Logan as if they already know each other, even though this was the first time they appeared together on page.

Claremont completely ignored the Jess has no powers thing. Sure, Jess is no longer Spider-Woman, but now she is living openly as a super powered person on Madripoor, and she's still living with Lindsay, who Logan refers to as Jess' partner, even though Jess and Lindsay are not working together. They have a sort of butch-femme dynamic going on, with Jess seeing herself as Lindsay's protector.

Eventually, Jess is beaten almost to death, so Logan can have a motive to get revenge, and she and Lindsay return to San Francisco. Jess appears sporadically in other series, most notably playing a supporting role again in a Mattie Franklin Spider-Woman series.

It wasn’t until Bendis did what he did to Jess, though, that the first Spider-Woman would emerge again as a character worth talking about.

End Part One.

#queer coding #my post #jessica drew #spider-woman #spider woman #marvel #marvel 616 #marvel comics #lindsay mccabe #astv #queer subtext #lesbian #analysis #meta analysis

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