[Meeting…] Spider-woman (Julia Carpenter)

One of the great topics of superhero comics is the creation of female versions of the most popular heroes, thus trying to create new characters that are striking and please the public, at the same time preventing the competition from creating these characters to attract and deceive readers.

The fate of these characters can be very variable, some triumph, others disappear or remain forgotten until they are recovered by a particular scriptwriter and many last one season and are then supplanted by another character of the same name.

The second time is the charm

An example of the latter case could be the original Spider-woman (Jessica Drew) who was created in the late 70s, but never achieved full acceptance or popularity equivalent to her male version. For this reason, during the great Marvel event known as the Secret Wars A new Spider-woman appeared, redheaded, with a suit very similar to the one Spider-man would wear in said event (the black suit with the white spider on the chest), thus giving a new opportunity to the concept of “spider heroine.”

Although it is true that years later the situation changed completely, as new Spider-womans were created (which did not seem to be liked too much either), the original was recovered (this time with greater acceptance by the public) and the second Spider-woman was modified.

Julia Carpenter vs. the world

Let's now return to focusing on the second Spider-Woman, the redhead with the black suit and white spider on her chest, whose real name is Julia Carpenter. His first appearance was as forced as it was surprising, since he was the only completely new character at the macro event. Secret Wars (well, as long as we ignore the Almighty who created them, of course).

That appearance did not give us any kind of clue about the origin of her powers or her personal motivations, leaving many unknowns about the character, which would be explained in later collections if the character achieved sufficient popularity, which was only half achieved, because although it is true that this Spider-woman is partially remembered, the reason seems to be more related to the fact of having appeared in one of Marvel's most mythical sagas (The Secret Wars) than for the character itself. Perhaps that was the reason why, after having been relatively popular and having tried the possibility of having its own series that did not appear, Spider-woman quickly fell into oblivion.

Fortunately she had a new opportunity thanks to Roy Thomas, who recovered her for his Avengers series, where he surrounded her with some classic characters like Hawkeye and other secondary characters who also asked for a second chance like the USAgent. Julia Carpenter's return to the world of superheroes was so well received that she was even considered the most popular within that group.

Obviously Marvel was not going to miss that opportunity and the idea of ​​giving her a new limited series that would explain her origins and in the process would tell us something more about the private life of Julia Carpenter and the nature of her powers, which by the way are not the same as those of Spider-man, despite the fact that both characters share agility, superhuman strength and the ability to climb walls.

Renew or die

A few years later, the character is forgotten to the point that her powers are directly taken away and she is removed from the comic panels, ending Julia Carpenter's career in the Marvel universe.

But for some reason this redhead reappears when no one expects it, recovering her powers and respecting her original essence but also undergoing some changes necessary for her update.  To begin with, her name was no longer linked to that of Spider-Man, changing to Arachne (a name that Carpenter herself suggested when she received her powers and which was later used by one of her enemies) and to finish, her suit would no longer be identical to Spider-man's black suit (which she had not worn for years so that she would not be confused with her archenemy Venom).

With these changes the character had her second chance, however fate had a bigger surprise in store for her and that is that after being the second Spider-woman, and the second Arachne, Julia Carpenter was going to undergo a radical change to end up being the second Madame Web.

Conclusion and recommendations

Spider-woman II is an interesting character because her story and powers have no direct relationship with Spider-man, which is something to be appreciated, however her name and appearance reveal a huge lack of originality on the part of Marvel, the existence of a previous Spider-woman and the fact that Spider-man no longer wore the same suit as this character forced the publisher to juggle her if they wanted to recover her for their stories.

If anyone wants to read something about this character, I recommend that you start with the Secret Wars, where he had his first appearance and then look for comics from the West Coast Avengers, Omega Flight and Force Works which are the superhero groups to which he has belonged. I also recommend the limited series he had in the nineties called simply spiderwoman, where its origin and the history known as Spider-woman There Can Only Be one, where all the characters who had had that name until now are gathered or search the collection Peter Parker Spider-man, where this character made several appearances.