Greetings comic lovers and welcome back to casually comics the channel where we chat
all things comics from reviews old and new to anecdotes and musing to history today it’s
history and I’m excited cause this tale gets petty and I have so many great quotes
for you.
If you love learning behind the scenes factoids about characters creations hit that like button
Today we’re going to be looking at spider-woman and the tangled web that was her creation
hatched out of mistrust and salt of years prior.
Now in modern continuity there have been several spider-women and sometimes alternate versions
such as Spider-Gwen are called Spider-Woman but we’re talking about the first official
Spider-Woman here Jessica Drew.
Now when many think of Jessica Drew those who know her in passing think of her classic
iconic costume and some who are unaware think of her as a knock off spider-man with a similar
origin.
Her origin is not similar at all actually and is rather outlandish and had one of the
quickest retcons ever changing directly after her first appearance in Marvel Spotlight #32
(February 1977)where she went from a spider who had evolved into a human into a human
who had had memories of being a spider implanted in her by Hydra.
She’s also named after Marv wolfman’s daughter.
If you were here for our review of black cat #1 you’ll remember that Marv Wolfman was
heavily involved in spider-woman for a time and was initially developing the black cat
as a villain for her before he left the book taking the black cat with him.
However what’s much more interesting or rather equally as interesting about Jessica
Drew as her in canon backstory is the behind the scenes shenanigans that ensured she was
created in the first place.
Spider-Woman was created for copyright and no other reason.
Marvel and DC already had a history of name squabbles one of the most notable being Wonder
Man a character who first appeared as a villain in The Avengers #9 (Oct. 1964) and largely
disappeared after for decades because of complaints from dc and by that I mean a full blown lawsuit
about confusion because they had wonder woman.
And had for like 2 seconds had a wonder man in 1963 he appeared once in superman 163.
And the stories not like you think it would be either.
If you ask nicely i’ll tell you about it.
However, DC had played fast and loose when it came to the issue of power man aka luke
cage yes luke cage’s hero name is power man and their own power girl.
It’s my favourite time receipt time a.k.a quote time.
In 1978 which was actually after spider-Woman Debuted Stan Lee spoke about some of all this
stating "I suddenly realized that some other company may quickly put out a book like that
and claim they have the right to use the name, and I thought we'd better do it real fast
to copyright the name.
So we just batted one quickly, and that's exactly what happened.
I wanted to protect the name, because it's the type of thing [where] someone else might
say, 'Hey, why don't we put out a Spider-Woman; they can't stop us.'
... You know, years ago we brought out Wonder Man, and [DC Comics] sued us because they
had Wonder Woman, and ... I said okay, I'll discontinue Wonder Man.
And all of a sudden they've got Power Girl [after Marvel had introduced Power Man].
Oh, boy.
How unfair."
And this wasn’t a concern coming out of thin air DC was in fact developing a spider-
woman but not a comic for an animated series.
They were planning to have the character join the Batman/Tarzan adventure hour which is
sadly not what it sounds like at all it’s pure clickbait.
It sounds like zome kind of wacky batman tazan teamup it’s not it was actually just episodes
of the new adventures of batman and tarzan lord of the jungle aired back to back.
Why you would want to watch those back to back i’m note sure but there you go.
They were planning to expand the block and add more cartoons one of which would be spider-woman.
Which is why Marvel put that rush on spider-woman as a character and were just like get it out
there which is why the origin was so haphazard and moved around and why it took so long to
get a tone and villains and just everything in place and for Drew to find her footing.
DC’s animated Spider-Woman would have to be changed into Web Woman kelly webster a
nasa scientist who gave that up to be farmer until she saves an alien who gives her a magic
ring he;s an insect alien so it grants her the powers of the insect kingdom.
Yeah dc had to scramble to make sure their cartoon got out too.
Everything about her had to revised to make sure she in no way violated marvel’s brand
new fancy trade mark.
Web Woman lasted 10 episodes by the way and I don;t know if she would have lasted any
more as spider-woman.
So looks like Marvel made the right call.
Who do most people remember now.
So protecting your copyright as hastily as possible you can still end up with a character
that people like but most likely only if you’re a mega publisher who people are going to give
a chance and if you come up with an iconic costume look at it.
It’s great.
So that was the tale of how a history of litigy and mistrust and copyrights led to the creation
of spider-woman.
I just felt like sharing.
I hope you enjoyed.
Which of your favourite characters has a messy origin let me know down below.
Thanks so much for watching casually comics.
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I’m Sasha and I’ll see you again soon.