The Good
Jessica Drew’s had a busy few months. She was grabbed into an inter-dimensional fight for her life against some of the most vicious villains from any world, she had to be equal parts spy, thief and fighter, and all that, along with the previous artist on her series, put her in some very awkward, stunted positions. But now she’s back on her own world, in her own time and in New York. And while it’s a city that might not be her home, but at least she’s familiar with it. It’s not long before she’s drawn into some of her old ways, however, as a case falls across her (now disused) desk: a case involving super-villain families being abducted and either unreported, or having the report quickly withdrawn. The person behind her getting this info? It’s only Daily Bugle grizzled veteran Ben Urich. Dennis Hopeless is practically making a career out of taking established characters and throwing them into completely new, foreign situations and for a character was well-traveled as Drew, that’s not an easy task. But in this storyline, he uses a very smart, clever bit of unfamiliarity: sympathy for super-villains. Most of what we get here is Drew’s narration, but when she has interactions with people it’s actually a little jarring in a really good way. Hopeless writes her not as cold, but very matter-of-fact and straightforward. She’s someone who has little time for niceties and wants to get straight to the point, making her stand out in a universe where everyone increasingly wants to be a little bit wry and a little bit gregarious.
Javier Rodriguez handles pencils and colors, and with Jessica rocking her new costume, it was going to take an artist with some real vision and talent to change what had been essentially the same costume for forty years. Rodriguez has pulled off not only the new costume, which looks functional and badass, having a few new tricks that it can deploy at will able to operate in, but he’s managed to make the action in the space she’s occupying looking fantastically fluid and vibrant while maintaining an air of dark intent. The action in this issue feels like it could be over-the-top at a few parts, most notably an actual arrow drawing the arc of her foot, but the style is just unreal enough to make it feel in place. Alvaro Lopez handles inks and provides a large part of why the visuals work so well, calcifying the solid, hard-hitting visuals and highlighting plenty of this strange world.
The Bad
This issue is extraordinarily chatty. While it’s meant to be an obvious jumping-on point, it doesn’t feel necessary that we get such an intense level of detail on almost page about the character’s backstory and her (very simple) reasons for jettisoning her previous, far more complicated, life.
The issue is set in New York, which appears to be its long-term home, and while parts of that work very well, overall it feels like if Drew really, really wanted to escape her previous life and get a fresh start, she could do that in another city much more easily, and give the readers a new setting to get invested in. One without at least three other major Spider-types active.
The Verdict
As far as new starts go, they don’t get much better than this. Drew’s shed a lot of her previous attachments, giving her a real chance at a new beginning freed from a great many of the constraints, both for the character and the stories she could be involved with, of S.H.I.E.L.D. and even the Avengers. It’s time for her to re-establish herself and Hopeless and Rodriguez are absolutely on the right track as far as that goes.