SPIDER-WOMAN: MORE OF HER EARLY STORIES

This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist blog post about superheroes looks at more Spider-Woman stories from her early years. For her first post click HERE.

SPIDER-WOMAN Vol 1 #17 (Aug 1979)

Title: Deathplunge

Villain: Wax Man (1st appearance)

Synopsis: Fully recovered now from her long war with the mutant Nekra and her cult of worshippers, Jessica Drew (Spider-Woman) treats herself to a night out at Monte Disco. She meets a young man named Eric and the two grow closer over drinks and dancing.

In the Ladies Room, another patron of the disco (lol) accidentally takes Jessica’s purse instead of her own, identical one. That purse contains Jessica’s compressed Spider-Woman costume, which the inebriated woman slips into and becomes a hit on the dance floor. 

Our heroine slips away from Eric to try getting back her costume without exposing her secret identity. At one point, the drunken woman dressed as Spider-Woman falls off the deck of the mountaintop disco. Jessica uses her powers to save the woman and recover her costume before the drunk knows what’s what.

Later that night, Eric and Jessica are making out, when Eric mutates into his supervillain form of Wax Man.

SPIDER-WOMAN Vol 1 #18 (Sep 1979)

Title: Sins of the Flesh

Villain: Wax Man

Synopsis: Wax Man runs away from Jessica Drew and manages to get his body back to normal before she catches up with him. He pretends his running was just a coy game and the pair resume making out. Once again, his rising metabolic rate triggers Eric’s transformation into his waxy, blobbish form and this time he tries killing Jessica like he has other men and women for months.

Our heroine slips away to become Spider-Woman and battles Wax Man. She gains the upper hand, but the villain escapes in his car. Spider-Woman flies after him and notes him using his wax powers to make himself look like a different man entirely.

Unable to stop Wax Man before he kills another woman, Spider-Woman tracks him down the next day. Amid their new battle the villain makes with an Origin Rant. He was a physician with a rare skin disease and when he tried inventing a cure for himself it instead turned him into the Wax Man.

He can appear as either a man or a woman and has killed several victims in his rage over his condition and his inability to get intimate without changing. Spider-Woman’s fight with Wax Man ends with her using her bio-electrical Venom Blasts to whittle his waxy body to bits.

NOTE: Wax Man was eventually able to reassemble his body and resumed his activities.

SPIDER-WOMAN Vol 1 #19 (Oct 1979)

Title: The Beast Within

Villains: The Committee and the Enforcer

Synopsis: Jessica Drew moves in with her new friend Lindsay McCabe, an aspiring actress who has no idea about Jessica’s secret identity. That night, as Spider-Woman, our heroine goes flying around Los Angeles on patrol.

She eventually comes across her old ally Jack Russell, Werewolf by Night, engaged in combat with a costumed supervillain called the Enforcer. That villain is an old foe of the Werewolf and Ghost Rider before him. Spider-Woman and Jack defeat the Enforcer and leave him for the cops.

Back at Jack’s apartment he and Spider-Woman discuss their previous meeting when they fought the supervillainess Morgan Le Fay. The Werewolf turns back into his human form and explains to our title character that he can control his transformations except on nights of the full moon, when he chains himself up so that he can’t go anywhere in werewolf form. 

They piece together that the Enforcer’s latest clients are the Committee, old foes of Jack Russell. Apparently, all their members weren’t killed in their previous encounter after all, and they are still hunting for a werewolf to use as an assassin … and now Spider-Woman is on their list of targets, too.

SPIDER-WOMAN Vol 1 #20 (Nov 1979)

Title: Tangled Webs

Villain: Spider-Man

Jessica Drew is looking for a new job. NOTE: Her previous job was with the Hatros Institute, but that turned out to be just a front for Nekra and her cult of killers.

Through the usual type of comic book misunderstandings, Spider-Woman and Spider-Man each mistakenly think the other is a villain, causing a fight between them. Eventually, they talk it out and realize their mistake. 

Our heroine asks if, like her, Spider-Man is from Wundagore Mountain in Transia, which prompts the duo to exchange general information about their respective origins. At length, they part as friends.

SPIDER-WOMAN Vol 1 #21 (Dec 1979)

Title: Beware the Bounty Hunter

Villains: The Shark Mob (1st appearance)

Synopsis: Spider-Woman, without revealing her secret identity, forms a Bounty Hunting partnership with wheelchair-bound criminologist and computer whiz Scotty McDowell. He uses technology to track down wanted criminals and Spider-Woman takes action to corral them.   

This leads to a battle between our title character and the Shark Mob, a gang of armed robbers who operate near the shoreline. Spider-Woman outfights them all and wins. She and Scotty split the reward money.

Back at her apartment as Jessica Drew, she continues deepening her friendship with the outgoing Lindsay McCabe.   

SPIDER-WOMAN Vol 1 #22 (Jan 1980)

Title: The Crimes of the Killer Clown

Villain: The Killer Clown (1st appearance)

Synopsis: Casper Whimpley, a man browbeaten and pushed around by his wife, devises some deadly clown-related weaponry for himself, dons a costume and begins taking his frustrations toward women out on female strangers by murdering them. 

With their Bounty Hunting partnership thriving, Spider-Woman and Scotty decide to do a little pro bono work by ending the serial slayings committed by the Killer Clown.  Our heroine stops the villain from finishing off his fourth victim but in the resulting battle the Killer Clown escapes.

He finds and kills the lady Spider-Woman saved. When Lindsay McCabe survives the Killer Clown’s next attack thanks to police arriving on the scene, Spider-Woman stakes out Lindsay’s hospital room, assuming the killer will once again want to finish off a surviving victim.

The villain shows up to do just that, but this time the fight ends with Spider-Woman defeating him and turning him over to the cops.

SPIDER-WOMAN Vol 1 #23 (Feb 1980)

Title: Enter the Gamesman

Villains: The Gamesmen (1st appearance) and his troops

Synopsis: Time has passed. When Spider-Woman drops off her latest collar for the reward money, her police allies draw her attention to one of their biggest targets: a costumed supervillain called the Gamesman.

By staying away from the superhero hub of New York City, the Gamesman and his gang have successfully carried out a string of robberies up and down the West Coast. Spider-Woman starts investigating the Gamesman and soon winds up getting ambushed by several of the villain’s goons. Timothy Braverman shows up and helps her drive them off. Claiming to be a reporter who is also interested in the Gamesman, he is really that very villain himself.

In a bizarre cliche that this series had avoided until now, Braverman/ the Gamesman romances Spider-Woman while pretending to help her look for her quarry. Scotty McDowell blows Timothy’s lie about being a reporter, but Spider-Woman is too lovestruck to care. (?)

When the superheroine interrupts the Gamesman and company’s next heist, a museum art robbery, she falls to the villain’s Stun-Gun, steel restraining cables and alarm-deadening foam. Gamesman leaves her to die in the now-burning museum but she saves herself.

The villain returns without his gang and is arrested. He unmasks and claims he came back because he truly loves Jessica, who doesn’t know what to believe.

SPIDER-WOMAN Vol 1 #24 (Mar 1980)

Title: Trapped in the Doomsday Room

Villains: The Gamesman 2 and his men

Synopsis: With the original Gamesman behind bars, one of his former criminal associates from long ago dons the Gamesman costume and weapons. He leads his own gang in robberies and in trying to locate the 10 million dollars in diamonds that the original Gamesman hid long ago.

When our heroine visits Timothy Braverman in prison he continues trying to convince her he loves her. 

Spider-Woman survives an attempt on her life by Gamesman 2 and his men, then later stops them from holding up the Saudi Arabian ambassador and his wife. The next day, the villains succeed in waylaying Spider-Woman and leaving her in their high-tech Doomsday Room to die.

SPIDER-WOMAN Vol 1 #25 (Apr 1980)

Title: One Spider-Woman Will Have to Go

Villains: Gamesman 2 and his men

Synopsis: Spider-Woman’s powers enable her to survive and escape from the Doomsday Room’s deathtraps.

Meanwhile, our heroine’s very public prison visits to the first Gamesman prompt the new one to hire a woman to dress up as Spider-Woman and take part in a raid to bust out Gamesman I.

The escape raid works and Gamesman 2 uses the escape and the fake Spider-Woman to try fooling Braverman into revealing the site of his hidden diamonds. The real Spider-Woman reveals herself and captures Gamesman 2 and his troops.

Timothy Braverman now tries to talk our title character into leaving the others for the cops and helping him recover his hidden diamonds, then fleeing together. Spider-Woman realizes Braverman has just been conning her this whole time so she knocks him out and turns him and the others over to the arriving police. 

SPIDER-WOMAN Vol 1 #26 (May 1980)

Title: The Blades of the Grinder

Villains: The Grinder and Rupert Dockery (1st appearance for both)

Synopsis: When Spider-Woman happens to save British-born media mogul Rupert Dockery from a mugger, he is inspired to use the same tabloid tactics that he used to make his British news outlets successful on his currently failing Los Angeles newspaper.

Rupert (obviously a pastiche of real-life media mogul Rupert Murdoch) hypes up Spider-Woman and all her past exploits to make his paper essential reading regarding her activities. When that initial boom in circulation starts to wear off, Dockery decides to secretly finance a professional thief to buy high-tech weaponry using razor-sharp blades (like Daredevil’s foe Gladiator uses) to cut into bank vaults.

Calling himself the Grinder, that criminal steals the money, then flies away carried by his armor’s additional spinning blades that let him fly like a helicopter would. In the days to come, Dockery exploits the repeated clashes between Spider-Woman and the Grinder to drive his newspaper through the roof. 

Ultimately, Scotty McDowell locates the Grinder’s hideout, where Spider-Woman clashes with him yet again and defeats him this time. Dockery plans more stunts to take advantage of Spider-Woman’s growing fame.

SPIDER-WOMAN Vol 1 #27 (Jun 1980)

Title: Blacked-Out by the Enforcer

Villains: The Enforcer and his men

Synopsis: A young female fan of Spider-Woman dons a costume and tries to stop an armed robbery in progress. The real Spider-Woman shows up to save her life and capture the robbers.

Meanwhile, Rupert Dockery wants to continue milking Spider-Woman Mania, so he covertly enables an escape from prison by the Enforcer. Furious at our heroine over their recent clash, the Enforcer gathers a gang around him and sets out for revenge.

Soon, our title character interrupts the villain and his gang when they break into a museum of anthropology to try stealing – among other things – an amulet similar to the one that once made the Enforcer powerful enough to take on Ghost Rider. 

Spider-Woman beats the gang members but the Enforcer shoots her with one of his specialized bullets, in this case one that causes blindness. He and his men take the heroine to their hideout, planning to ransom her off.

Her altered metabolism lets her recover her eyesight and she breaks out of the cage just as the wheelchair-bound Scotty is caught entering the hideout and gets shot by a poisonous bullet from the Enforcer’s guns.

SPIDER-WOMAN Vol 1 #28 (Jul 1980)

Title: So That Scotty Should Not Die

Villains: The Enforcer and his men

Synopsis: The Enforcer taunts Spider-Woman that Scotty will die slowly from the poison bullet, which makes her so furious she mops up his men and defeats the Enforcer. Next, she makes the villain store Scotty in the Enforcer’s stolen cryo-chamber to stop the spread of the poison for a time.

The villain tells Spider-Woman that only he has the antidote to the poison killing Scotty and says that he will give it to her in exchange for her helping him steal millions of dollars. (Why can’t she just physically force the villain to turn over the antidote like she made him put Scotty in a cryo-chamber? Because comic book, that’s why.)

The torn and conflicted Spider-Woman agrees to the Enforcer’s terms and helps him carry out a big money robbery at the Hollywood Bowl and later the theft of a priceless stamp collection. Peter Parker doesn’t understand why our heroine is suddenly helping the Enforcer, so he becomes Spider-Man and sets out to help her.

SPIDER-WOMAN Vol 1 #29 (Aug 1980)

Title: I Killed Spider-Man

Villains: The Enforcer and his men

Synopsis: When Spider-Woman helps the Enforcer rob a landed plane of a fortune in jewels, Spider-Man arrives to take on both of them. He even pursues them as they flee the scene and the resulting battle makes it look like Spider-Woman killed Spider-Man in the fray.

Rupert Dockery gets out an extra edition to hype Spider-Man’s death at Spider-Woman’s hands, but naturally Spidey isn’t really dead. He finds the Enforcer’s hideout where he breaks in and captures the criminal.

Spider-Woman explains to Spider-Man and the arriving authorities why she seemed to be helping the Enforcer and the villain gloats that he was lying – there is NO antidote to the poison in Scotty’s body. The paramedics studying Scotty’s body in the cryo-chamber tell our heroine that there may be hope for his survival.

SPIDER-WOMAN Vol 1 #30 (Sep 1980)

Title: Through the Eyes of the Fly

Villains: The Fly and Dr. Karl Malus

Synopsis: At the hospital, Spider-Woman stands watch over the cryo-chamber containing Scotty’s body while the physicians scramble for a cure. Spider-Man’s frequent villain the Fly arrives to try stealing the chamber for Dr. Karl Malus, the criminal doctor for whom the Enforcer stole the device in the first place.

Spider-Woman fights it out with the Fly and forces him to flee. When he returns to Dr. Malus the mad scientist tells him that they might not need the cryo-chamber to hold the Fly’s body while the doctor tries to stop the gradual fading of that villain’s superpowers. Malus believes blood from Spider-Woman might hold a cure.

The Fly is sent out on a rampage to lure Spider-Woman away from the hospital and the pair again do battle. Ultimately, our title character defeats the Fly and captures Dr. Malus. The doctor makes a deal with the authorities for lenient treatment in exchange for curing Scotty McDowell, which he succeeds in doing. 

SPIDER-WOMAN Vol 1 #31 (Oct 1980)

Title: The Sting of the Hornet

Villains: The Hornet and Dr. Malus

Synopsis: Time has passed. Spider-Woman and Scotty McDowell are back in their routine of collecting bounties, but Scotty’s sleeping hours have been plagued with nightmares in which he has unnatural powers and abilities. Presently, he wakes up one morning to find he has grown wings, possesses super-strength and can fire his own form of bio-electrical energy blasts.

Scotty does not realize yet that Dr. Malus’ “cure” also injected him with some of the Fly’s DNA as well as some of the doctor’s own experimental formula. That is what caused his mutation. Keeping all this a secret from Spider-Woman, Scotty dons a costume and flies into action calling himself the Hornet.

He happens to help our heroine save a plane full of passengers from a potential crash-landing and the next day joins her in stopping a jewel robbery. Scotty’s personality has grown unstable from Malus’ treatments, however and when his bio-electrical “Stings” accidentally injure the store owner he callously does not care.

Spider-Woman, still unaware that the Hornet is really Scotty due to the “buzzy” voice he puts on as that figure, chews him out for his behavior. The Hornet is pushed over the edge by this and wants to destroy Spider-Woman for rejecting his help. Over the following days he goes on a rampage, forcing our title character to confront him.

Meanwhile, Dr. Malus, awaiting trial, pretended to have nothing to do with the Hornet and offered to devise a weapon to be used against the new villain. Due to its “complexity” Malus insists he must handle the weapon himself. The police take him to the site of the battle between Spider-Woman and Hornet.

Pretending to miss the villain, Dr. Malus hits Spider-Woman with his blaster and the Hornet flies off. While the cops scramble to help the fallen heroine, Malus slips away. As the Hornet, a shaken and conflicted Scotty arrives back at his home to find Dr. Malus waiting for him inside.

SPIDER-WOMAN Vol 1 #32 (Nov 1980)

Title: The Fangs of Werewolf by Night

Villains: The Hornet and Dr. Malus

Synopsis: Under the guise of “helping” Scotty master his powers, Dr. Malus convinces him to secretly harbor him in his home. Increasingly unstable, Scotty is egged into another clash with Spider-Woman.

Taking advantage of his secret identity, Scotty innocently pretends to feed Spider-Woman a lead on the Hornet’s location. This leads to a battle at a beach where the Hornet endangers beachgoers as a means of escape when our heroine gets the upper hand.

Malus’ access to Scotty’s computers lets him discover that Jack Russell is the Los Angeles werewolf and he takes control of Jack with a device that would supposedly cure him of the curse of lycanthropy. The doctor then sics both the Hornet and the enthralled Werewolf on Spider-Woman.

During the resulting battle, the superheroine manages to destroy the device letting Dr. Malus control Jack. She then defeats and unmasks the Hornet while the Werewolf captures Malus. (It’s a non-full moon night so Jack is in rational control of his werewolf form.)

Over the next five days, Scotty recovers his sanity at the hospital and all his powers as the Hornet wear off. 

SPIDER-WOMAN Vol 1 #33 (Dec 1980)

Title: Yesterday’s Villain

Villain: Century (1st appearance)

Synopsis: Right after Spider-Woman saves a construction company official from a violent protester she checks in with Scotty. He says their latest job for reward money will be up in San Francisco against a costumed villain called Century.

NOTE: At first the villain was called Turner D. Century but Marvel changed it. In the same way that Paste Pot Pete was renamed the Trapster and Madame MacEvil was renamed Moon Dragon, this villain was renamed simply Century.

In San Francisco, Spider-Woman clashes with the crazed villain multiple times. His costume is clothing from around the year 1901 and his weapons are all modified versions of objects from that same time period. His umbrella shoots fire and power blasts. His bicycle built for two can fly, his vest is bullet-proof, etc.

Century’s insane goal is to restore San Francisco to how it was before the Great Earthquake of 1906. To that end he destroys examples of modern architecture as well as sites like porno theaters. In their first few clashes, Spider-Woman ends up forced to rescue civilians from Century’s destructive attacks, letting him escape.

Scotty’s computer research at last produces a lead which takes Spider-Woman right to Century. He lives in the mansion of the incredibly elderly Morgan McNeil Hardy, a mutant with an extraordinary lifespan and ability to rebirth himself after death. NOTE: This man became known as Marvel’s villain the Forever Man.

“Century” is Clifford Michaels, who was adopted by Hardy long ago. He raised Clifford to love the past as much as he himself did and even used his wealth to build a replica of 1901 San Francisco in the mansion’s vast “basement.”

Using his adopted father’s fortune, Clifford was able to devise his nostalgia-based weaponry and costume, plus his vintage mustache. Century has no intention of stopping his attacks, so he and Spider-Woman fight it out once again, this time starting a fire in the replica San Francisco.

The flames soon reach Century’s armories, causing an explosion that destroys the entire mansion. Our heroine gets out in time but Century and the Forever Man seem to have been killed. But naturally they turn up alive years later. 

NOTE: If you’ve ever seen the movie Man of the Century, about a 1999 man who dresses and lives like it’s the 1920s, think of Century as a supervillain version of that character.