Spider-Who Part 124: WLM Spider-Woman

I wasn’t sure what to call this Spider-Woman because she was only in a single story of a french publication in 1981, and her identity was never revealed. The character probably isn’t French since the story takes place in New York City, but I guess there’s also nothing saying she isn’t French. But that’s all besides the point.

This Spider-Woman is a member of the Woman’s Liberation Movement, or WLM. In the story, when Spider-Man starts getting lots of press about saving the day, the President of the WLM wants to prove that a woman can be just as heroic as a man, and so she gives a costume to their most athletic member, whose name, as I said before, is never revealed to us. The President of the WLM also plans to take plenty of pictures of Spider-Woman in action and sell them to the Daily Bugle to make sure the world sees that women can be strong too. Their plan works, and soon Spider-Woman is all everyone is talking about.

Without any super powers at all, she saves people from burning buildings, fights criminals, and generally fights crime around the city. She is shown climbing drainage pipes to scale buildings and swing from them into windows. At one point she even saves a man from a car that has just driven off the bridge into the East River and swimming with him to safety.

Eventually Spider-Man finds and confronts Spider-Woman, and after witnessing her save a baby from falling out of a window, asks her about her costume. She explains the situation and her reasoning, but Spider-Man simply says that despite her bravery and fitness level, she will just get herself into trouble without any real superpowers.

Later when Spider-Man goes to confront Spider-Woman again, the President of the WLM, who is trying to take a picture of them, falls from the side of the building and her coat catches on a nail. Spider-Woman is unable to reach her, and so she asks Spider-Man to use his powers to save her. He easily wall-crawls over and saves her, and then basically says “I told you so” regarding needing powers to do the job.

What a jerk.

Spider-Who Part 123: Spider-Man, Mattie Franklin

You thought we were done with Mattie Franklin? Guess again! Hahaha! We have one last date with Mattie before we’re free. There was a time in Peter Parker’s history were he actually did retire as Spider-Man. As a massive Spider-Man fan, Mattie decided to fill her favorite hero’s shoes, or tights as the case may be, by taking up the costume and name herself. That’s right, one time Spider-Man was a woman!

Mattie Franklin flying around as Spider-Man

Peter Parker even chanced across a fight between Spider-Man and some villains and commented how much easier it was to just be the one taking the photographs rather than the punches to the face. But even as he says that, he witnesses Spider-Man get hit and what looks to be hurt pretty bad. Rushing over to “his” side, he removes Spidey’s mask only to find the face of a young teen girl staring back at him.

This of course was all before she took on the Spider-Woman name and before being attacked by Charlotte Witter. Mattie’s run as Spider-Man lasted for about 4 issues, as her identity was kept a secret for a couple issues.

Spider-Who 122: Fever Spider-Man

Spider-Man: Fever, written by Brendan McCarthy, drawn by Brendan McCarthy, colours by Tim Cook and Brendan McCarthy.

This story revolves around a chance meeting between Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme. While reading a new rare tomb sent to him in the mail, Doctor Strange inadvertently releases an Astral Plane creature known as an Arachnix. The Arachnix are Soul Eaters, and the one let into the world travels through drain pipes into a nearby building where Spider-Man happens to be fighting The Vulture. The Arachnix possesses Vulture, and makes him spray Spider-Man in the face with insect repellent. The bug spray is also infused with the evil magick of the Arachnix, causing Spider-Man to start to black out. He falls out of the window, landing on the roof of Doctor Strange’s home. Trying desperately to get some help, Spidey crawls through a window and tumbles into the good Doctor’s bathtub. This is where the Arachnix finds Spider-Man, and removes his soul, stealing it away to the Astral Plane.

Doctor Strange gives pursuit but loses him is the bizarre dimension. Meanwhile Spider-Man in soul form is dragged to the edge of the Abyss where the tribe of spider demons lives. Before they can feast, one of the Arachnix realizes that the soul they have is not simply a man, but part spider, and they long ago forbid spider to eat spider. As a trial of sorts to determine if Spider-Man is man or spider, they send him into the Insect Kingdom to hunt the Sorror-Fly. Spider-Man is dizzy and unclear what’s going on, but all he knows is that he must find this Sorror-Fly creature to feed to the Arachnix, or else he will be eaten himself.

This book is CRAZY!!! It’s a massive weird acid trip. It’s a Spider-Man story on drugs. I love the insane bonkers art, though the story and writing leave a little to be desired as it can be a little hard to follow. At any rate, unlike the Secret War book I bought, I got this one on sale for only about $7 and I really enjoyed its brand of insanity.

Spider-Who Part 121: Secret War Spider-Man

In 2005 Marvel published a short crossover series called Secret War, I suppose trying to capitalize on the wildly successful Secret Wars series from 1984. This is of course all even further complicated now that they’ve made another Sercret Wars series in 2015.

Anyways, this particular series is particularly annoying to me personally, because while trying to look up images for this black and blue costume, I simply couldn’t find any good images that weren’t alternate costumes from video games like my favorite endless runner Spider-Man Unlimited. I couldn’t even find that many good shots of this cover. So you know what I did? I went out and bought a copy of it myself. And you know what I found out? The Secret War suit barely shows up in the book AT ALL! I think there are 2 pages it’s on, and they’re flashbacks that are colour distorted to illustrate this by being all purple. One of the appearances in the book is just Spidey’s hand because the image is supposed to be from his point of view. SO FRUSTRATING!!

The best images are the cover and the design sketch of the costume I’ve included below found in the back of the book. Both are images I took myself, so please forgive the quality, or that part of the cover above is cut-off at the sides.

The point of the new suits for the team assembled by Nick Fury to attack Latveria is supposedly to be stealthy (which is by they’re all black) and they also have some seemingly magical resistance to “impacts” which saves them when a building collapses on them all.

Honestly, I kinda hate this suit now because I spent nearly $30 to find out that it’s basically not even in the book. I mean, the story wasn’t terrible or anything, but… Ugh! Thankfully I found another Spidey costume recently which I also bought the trade paperback to see more of, and THAT book was cool. I think that one will be next!

Spider-Who Part 120: Electro-Proof Spider-Man

What can I say? This is the weird, lumpy, but still kinda cool looking suit that Spider-Man made to go up against Electro with no fear of being electrocuted. Not much else to say. Have a good day everyone! 😀

Spider-Who Part 119: Megamorph Spider-Man

In conjunction with the toy company Toy Biz, Marvel Comics made a series of comics about several super heroes being given unique giant transforming mechs, built by Tony Stark. They would ONLY work if the correct hero was piloting the robot from inside, and the robots had additional unique powers based on the hero’s power, for example Wolverine’s robot could self-repair. Spider-Man was one of the heroes chosen, and his robot could shoot webbing, and transform into a big spider-like vehicle.

Spider-Who Part 118: Fear Itself Spider-Man

Ok, so I’m going to be super honest here and say I know next to nothing about this suit. There was a cross-over story event called Fear Itself in which many characters, both good and evil, get new super powered suits and weapons that make them vastly more powerful. The overall plot is that an ancient Asgardian fear god called The Serpent is attacking the world, and making some heroes and villains its champions.Everyone else has to try to stop them and the big snake.

As you can see Spider-Man’s weapons are some kind of arm mounted blades. Anyways it makes the characters glow kinda like they’re in Tron, and I believe the weapons are made out of Uru, the same material Thor’s hammer Mjolnir is made of. After the even all the fun new toys are destroyed though.

Below is another shot of all the powered up heroes, with another small look at Spider-Man on the far right.

Spider-Who 118: The Fantastic Spider-Man

This wonderful version of the Fantastic Four costume mashed up with Spider-Man’s look is the suit Peter wears only very briefly when he arrives to join the FF after Johnny Storm’s believed death. You see, in Johnny’s will, he requested that Peter take his place on the team, so Spidey shows up for duty in the blue and black threads you see above. Unknown to Peter, the FF had recently rebranded themselves into the “Future Foundation”, which is when they provide him with the white and black Future Foundation suit.

Spider-Who Part 117: Spider-Man, Yu Komori

Yu Komori is the Spider-Man of Earth-70019, and the star of the series Spider-Man: The Manga. Living in Tokyo, Yu Komori is a brilliant student specializing in radiation. During one of his own experiments, a spider is exposed to radiation and then bites him, giving him his powers.

He fights several villains, the first being cyborg version of Electro. When Yu fights Electro as Spider-Man the second time after being defeated, he punches Electro in anger and frustration, accidentally killing him as he is not aware of his full spider strength. It turns out Electro was the older brother of his childhood friend, and also the girl he has a crush on, Rumi. While Rumi doesn’t blame Spider-Man for the death of her bother, Yu still feels a lot of guilt about it.

As Spider-Man, Yu fight several villains such as a version of The Lizard, The Kangaroo, a ghost of a woman who throws herself off a bridge, psychics, and a street racer known as the Mad Racer, who kills Rumi. Yu also gets into trouble with gangs, drug dealers, crazy teachers, the Yakuza, an invisible tiger, and even a person named Mitsuo who temporarily gets spider powers after receiving a blood transfusion from Yu. Drama, drama, drama!

While Yu Komori wasn’t seen in Spider-Verse, he is mentioned by name in Spider-Verse issue #2. In the scene two non-specific Spider-Men take a break from the final battle with the Inheritors to refill their webbing cartridges. They talk about all the various Spider-Men they’ve met or seen, one mentioning Komori, and attempt to determine what small variation is what sets them apart other than their costumes. During their brief break from fighting, they are unable to determine a difference, but neither notices that one wears a wedding band on his finger while the other does not.

Spider-Who Part 116: Sonic Proof Spider-Man, Kaine

Once Peter Parker came up with the cure for the virus that mutated everyone in New York City into giant spiders, Tarantula attacked in an attempt to stop him. As a way to test the cure to see if it worked, Peter simply threw Tarantula into the vat, fully submerging him. When he surfaced, not only was he Kaine once more, but even all his previous deformities and degradation of being an imperfect clone appeared to be cured. Not only that, but he now had organic webbing, and sharp dagger-like stingers that could be extended or retracted from his wrists.

Choosing to help Peter fight the Spider-Queen, Kaine required a costume to hide his face since he looks exactly the same as Peter. Peter gave him his green Stealth Spider-Man costume, modified to be fully immune to sonics to protect him from the Spider-Queen’s sonic scream. Madam Web had the costume’s ability to change appearance locked into a single red pattern to make it unique for Kaine.

Using the suit’s sonic proof abilities, and his newly acquired stingers, managed to deal the final killing blow to Spider-Queen when she was a 28-story tall monster.