Spider-Gwen 0: Most Wanted?

Comic Info

Spider-Gwen (1) #1 Variant

Reprints Edge of Spider-Verse #2 and Spider-Gwen (1) #1-5 (November 2014-August 2015).  Bitten by a radioactive spider and blamed for the death of Peter Parker, Spider-Woman is hounded by J. Jonah Jameson and the police.  Spider-Woman has a secret.  She is really the daughter of George Stacy, and Gwen Stacy is out to make sure no one has to die like Peter died.  While trying to balance her life in the band the Mary Janes and fight crime on the side, Gwen Stacy has a full plate…and being targeted by Lieutenant Frank Castle and the Kingpin’s attorney Matt Murdock isn’t making things any easier.

Written by Jason Latour and illustrated by Robbi Rodriguez, Spider-Gwen 0:  Most Wanted? collects both Spider-Woman’s introduction in the Spider-Verse storyline (November 2014) but also the first volume of the Spider-Gwen series (April 2015-August 2015).  The Spider-Gwen series was relaunched after Secret Wars.

I really haven’t enjoyed what Dan Slott has done to Spider-Man and combined with Brian Michael Bendis’ destruction of the Avengers and X-Men, Marvel has become pretty unreadable.  Spider-Gwen is a spin-off of Slott’s Spider-Verse crossover series but feels more like the What If? issue that spun-off Spider-Girl.

Spider-Gwen (1) #3

If Spider-Girl didn’t exist, Spider-Gwen would have been a better idea.  I actually enjoyed Spider-Girl which boiled down to be an essentially early Amazing Spider-Man comic.  Spider-Gwen takes more of a late teen approach to Amazing Spider-Man and puts her in a girl band…because I guess that shows “girl power” (I think it is a rather lazy way to show Gwen is independent).  The story is pretty fluid and doesn’t seem entirely linear.  I had a hard time following the basic storyline because it didn’t always seem to line up right (plus, the “thrown in the deep end” concept of entering a story midway).

The art for the story is interesting and not mainstream.  Robbi Rodriguez’s style seems a bit like Jeff Lemire combined with Fiona Staples.  I also particularly like the cover artwork (also Rodriguez) which plays with the style and colors…I wish that the interior art was more like the covers.

Spider-Gwen is on the border of being good, but it just isn’t there.  Being tied to the Spider-Verse means being tied to the confusion of what’s going on in the other Spider-Man titles.  Spider-Gwen is at least out of the “universe” of Spider-Man which helps it a little, but efforts to keep it more tied to the traditional Marvel Universe could doom it…plus, people often just don’t love alternate timeline stories.