Spider-Who Part 41: Ultimate Spider-Woman, Jessica Drew

Staying in the Ultimate Universe (or Earth-1610) from yesterday, let’s talk about Ultimate Spider-Woman. This one is going to be a little different in that I’m going to reference quite a few past Spider-Man moments, so bear with me.

If you recall, we talked about how in the “616” universe, a villain named The Jackal took the DNA of Peter Parker and created several clones. The first being Kaine, and the second coming to name himself Ben Reilly. This era of the Spider-Man comics in the 90s was called The Clone Saga. It went on for YEARS and was a huge complicated mess that seemed like the writers had no idea where they were going with it. Years later when the time came in the Ultimate Universe comics to retell The Clone Saga, writer Brian Michael Bendis actually managed to make one of the most hated story arcs in Spider-Man history into a concise, tight story that made sense, and even had some new ideas when it came to clones.

In this story, the scientists doing the cloning didn’t just make clones, they also did genetic alterations on them at the same time. One of these clones had its X & Y chromosomes swapped during development and the outcome was a female Peter Parker clone. Keep in mind, she still has all of Peter’s memories up to the point of cloning, so to say this was a confusing time in her life is an understatement. She was given the new name of Jessica Drew, and eventually took on the title of Spider-Woman. After the death of Peter Parker and when Miles Morales first came on the scene, Jessica became a sort of role model for the younger Spider-Man, teaching him how to be a hero.

Interestingly, Jessica has organic webs that come from her finger tips, which was probably the inspiration for how Silk makes her webs as well. I wonder if all women who are bitten by radioactive spiders (or at least have the DNA result of the act) end up being able to spin spider silk from their finger tips?