Spider-Woman Origin #5

Background

Jessica was given, by Nick Fury, the location of her lost mother, somewhere in New York. After telling Fury that she must do this alone, she rushes to get to her but is only mere minutes late. Hydra agents have killed her and they manage to escape from a distraught Jessica.

After finding her mother, it's now time to search down her father who is on an oil refinery controlled by Hydra. Jessica sneaks in and finally gets to confront her father after so many years apart.

Story Details

On one of Hydra's oil drilling refineries, an approaching helicopter drops off Madame Hydra who is there to meet up with the general Wyndham. It appears Jessica didn't, in fact, kill him when she destroyed his headquarters earlier in the series, but now he's in a wheelchair, most of his hair is gone, he's pretty scarred up and there's a hose running into his mouth. She might not have killed him up but he'll certainly never forget her name.

Somewhere inside the oil rig, Spider-Woman and her father come face to face with one another. Jessica pulls off her mask, they stare at one another and then Dr. Drew embraces his daughter, which causes Jessica to begin crying. But their hear-felt meeting is cut pretty short when Jessica realizes that her father is more interested in taking her temperature then he is in actually seeing his daughter alive and healthy.

Jessica finds out that he has been working with Hydra in an attempt to make more versions of her to supply Hydra with an army of super-hero terrorist. When she knows there's no love in her father for her, she puts her mask back on, which triggers all sorts of false, dream-like visions to go through her mind, mixing reality with fiction. Dr. Drew explains to her that Hydra caused this in its attempts to control her. She turns her back on her father and leaves him behind.

Reeling from everything she has just found out about herself, about what Hydra has done to her and what her own father is willing to keep doing, Jessica takes out everything on Hydra's base and any and all soldiers she comes across, punching and kicking at everything that represents everything that is wrong in her life. Making her way through the grunt soldiers she comes to a large group of woman all dressed in a green and yellow knock off of her costume. It seems they are all the survivors of her father's experimentations trying to copy the effects he stumbled on with Jessica. Telling her that they are all really big fans of hers and how they really don't want to kill her, Jessica jumps in with her fists clenched.

While the fight is going on up on deck, Madame Hydra goes to get Dr. Drew to take him off the platform so that he can continue his work elsewhere. Dr. Drew just hangs his head and tells her he's not leaving. She shoots him where he sits explaining that two will now take his place. She couldn't very well leave him there for S.H.I.E.L.D. to find so that they too would have the Athena Project.

Up on deck during the fight, one of the fake Spider-Women asks Jessica why she's fighting when there's no way she can possibly win. Jessica manages to get out that she's not trying to win, she's only trying to keep them all there, when a huge explosion reduces the oil rig to nothing but debris floating in the ocean. Along with the wreckage, Jessica's body floats on the surface allowing the flying aircraft-carrier of S.H.I.E.L.D to be able to find her and pull her out of the water.

Days later in San Francisco Nick Fury offers Jessica an open invitation to join S.H.I.E.L.D whenever she decides that's what she wants. Jessica comments that there doesn't seem to be any super heroes on the West Coast so she'll just stay there for awhile. She offers Fury her business card with "Drew Investigations" on it along with her number. For the way Fury has treated her, she'll always be grateful and whenever he needs her all he has to do is call.

General Comments

Finally confronting her father Jessica learns that he is still really only interested in his work, which is revealed to be nothing more than him trying to mimic the effects of the accident that happened to Jessica right before she was born. Leaving her father Jessica sets bombs all over the rig and then she starts in on the Hydra agents.

During the fight she is met by a large number of women who were the survivors of her father's failed experiments to recreate the effects of the accident that gave Jessica her powers. While the fight is taking place on deck, below Madame Hydra kills Dr. Drew for turning his back on them. After the rig blows up with everyone still there, Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. fish Jessica's battered body from the water.

Some days later Nick Fury and Jessica meet where Fury extends his invitation to her once more to join him and work for S.H.I.E.L.D. She declines but tells him that she'll be there whenever he needs her.

Overall Rating

I gave this one a high rating just because it finally put to order the whole mess that was Spider-Woman's origin. It now appears that Jessica received her powers from an accident involving one of her father's experiments and everything else with the High Evolutionary was just brain-washing done by Hydra to help them control her.

For putting to order Spider-Woman's origin once and for all warrants a decent rating, but besides that, Bendis creates another great story, filled with great characterization. I loved seeing Jessica's father be concerned for his daughter but at the same time interested in nothing more than gathering as much data from her to help him in his work. It was nice to see the struggle between the good side of her father and the obsessed villain he became, abandoning all that he loved and cared for.