Although Marvel Comics had intended their “Gwen Stacy as Spider-Woman” alternate-universe story to be a one-shot, it has proved to be so popular that now Spider-Gwen (yes, that’s the real title) will be an ongoing series starting February 2015! And before you ask, of course The Mary Janes rock group are coming back.
Spoilers for the Spider-Gwen one-shot.
At New York Comic-Con, Marvel confirmed that Jason Latour, Robbi Rodriguez, and Rico Renzi—the team who made Spider-Gwen a reality in Edge of Spider-Verse #2—will return for the new series. While the one-shot gave a pretty comprehensive look at Gwen’s life as Spider-Woman in the space of one issue, Spider-Gwen #1 sounds like it will focus on Gwen’s early days as a superhero, and especially her troubled relationship with her police chief father. Latour explained:
For her father, he didn’t quite give her the “great power equals great responsibility” speech, but he essentially gave that speech, and now he has to be put to the test. Both of those characters will challenge each other’s assertions.
Latour reassured readers that we’ll see more of Gwen’s all-girl band The Mary Janes, even as she abandoned them at their big gig to fight crime in the one-shot. In an interview with Newsarama, he gave cool insight as to why Gwen plays the drums, and how Peter Parker’s death (!—they really did flip everything) inspired her to be a superhero:
[W]hat you need to take away from that, is she feels responsible for having inspired him to become the Lizard. When she got her superpowers, she basically did what 616 Peter did, which is try to become famous, try to be on stage. So her being on stage inspired [her] Peter to try to be special, too. So he did this, became a supervillain, they fought, and somehow, Peter died. So she feels responsible for Peter’s death. And it’s also interesting because her dad is a cop, so now she’s a criminal.
This being an AU, Latour teased other characters we’ll see following different paths:
That sort of evil-ish Matt Murdock will be a big part of things moving forward. We have sort of a new, retro take on an old Spider-villain to start, and then we have a surprise antagonist, who’s also a well-known New York Marvel character. Speculate away.
He couldn’t resist adding:
Look, I’ll be real coy about this, but I’ll say one thing—the Parkers, Ben and May, are still alive. Just keep that in the back of your head.
And while you wait for February, you can catch a glimpse of Spider-Gwen in next month’s Amazing Spider-Man #9, part of the multiverse Spider-Verse comics.
Image: Robbi Rodriguez/Marvel Comics
