This issue has everything! A photo cover (for more on the photo cover, go here) with special effects! Double-sized! Tons of guest stars from the entire character’s history! Here’s how they did the cover:
It’s also the last issue.
And guess what? She dies!
We get introduced to a guy called “Locksmith” and his partner, a seer named Tick Tock.
They capture Spider-Woman while she is showering.
Of course. Cheesecake is a grand tradition for this series.
They’ve also got several of her friends and enemies (even Daddy Longlegs!), and they all must cum-bay-ya to escape together and then, when they do…
It turns out SW’s oldest foe, Morgan Le Fay, was the real enemy. The two literally fight to the death.
Morgan’s death is wicked.
And it ends with Jessica wandering off into space, astrally, with her soul saying goodbye to the reader.
Not the ending you’d expect from this mag, which generally played it safe and “normal,” but then this is a different creative team and writer Ann Nocenti is known for the offbeat and occult. Frankly, if the book had been as radical and different as this issue all the way through, it would have been a much more memorable read.
It’s too bad this death didn’t “stick”- ( of course, how many of them actually do, anyway?? ) ‘Spider-Woman’ was a poorly-conceived concept from the get-go. I just don’t care for all these female ribs-taken-from-their-successful-male-counterparts characters, but at least as these characters go, Spider-Woman wasn’t as banal as the ( nerve-wracking ) She-Hulk. These lady-clones are just unnecessary, and counterintuitive to Marvel’s mission to get the world at large to take their products seriously. Just my take. ‘B-‘, indeed.