Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman is in a bad place. So bad in fact, that she’s comparing herself to “the most screwed over person in the history of the universe,” who just happens to be, yep you guessed it, Wolverine. When your life gets so bad that you’re comparing it to Wolverine’s, then you know you’re at rock bottom. She’s so low that suicide isn’t out of the question. Wisely, she decides against it. With her good looks, perfect body, and powerful pheromones, Jessica’s life can’t be that bad, eh? Well, it just so happens that it’s those good looks that have got her so down. You see, The Skrull Queen replaced Jessica, and lead The Skrull secret invasion of Earth as a Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman copy. Jessica had nothing to do with it, and was in fact as much a victim of The Skrull’s invasion as nearly everyone else. Unfortunately, her good looks, stolen by The Skrull Queen, became the poster child for The Skrull Invasion. So, Jessica’s been having a hard time recently reacclimating herself to a world where her very image and visage invokes horrible fear and loathing. When things look like they can’t get much worse for Jessica, in steps Abigail Brand, a member of S.W.O.R.D., the Sentient World Observation and Response Department, “a secret counterterrorism and intelligence agency that deals with threats to world security.” S.W.O.R.D.’s mission, should you accept it, Ms. Drew, is to find and squish Skrulls (okay, so “terminate Skrulls” doesn’t alliterate! So, sue me!) Jessica, needing to exorcise some of that anger and aggression, through some good ole’, Wolverine style, mayhem and murder, can’t resist taking the job. Spider-Woman, Agent of S.W.O.R.D., ‘nuff said! First stop (and how could we not see this one coming?) is Madripoor!

Jessica Drew aka Spider-Woman is an interesting character, albeit with a bit of a convoluted origin that has admittedly been straightened out over the years. She was fun when she debuted in the late 1970’s, but over the years waned in popularity. Thanks to Secret Invasion, she’s seen a bit of resurgence, and since she’s now the Marvel Universe’s female version of the much melodramatically maligned mutant, Wolverine, giving her a staring role in a monthly again makes pretty good sense. To be honest, Jessica has a lot of potential as a character, and always has. It’ll be interesting to see where Marvel Comics’ uber-scribe Brian Michael Bendis takes her, but do we really need a female version of the “best at what he does?” Are heroes who play hunter/killer role really heroes? Is Wolverine just getting yet another series (in spirit)? Hopefully, these questions will be addressed. Bendis is the writer to do so, so Spider-Woman just might warrant following, at least for a while.

Alex Maleev is a good choice as artist for this book. His incredibly dark colored layouts create the illusion of there being a very large shadow over the entire events of the issue, and there is, both metaphorically and literally. We really don’t know what the deal with S.W.O.R.D. is, and Jessica’s state of mind is represented and reflected by the artistic atmosphere that Maleev creates. Oh yeah, he doesn’t do a bad job of showcasing her hottie qualities either…

Overall, it looks like Marvel has another potential hit on its hands with Spider-Woman. Recently launched, and re-launched hero titles such as Invincible Iron Man, War Machine, and Wolverine: Weapon X have been quite good, so hopefully Spider-Woman will follow suit. It certainly has the potential to do so with its creative team.