Spider-people who should be in Into the Spider-verse: Jessica Drew
Oh? You thought I meant the ex-Hydra Agent Jessica Drew? Nonononononono. Jessica Drew is her own thing. I mean the only canonically queer Spider-person who Marvel won’t acknowledge and honestly has more to do with Miles Morales’ origin than Peter Parker Jessica Drew.
If I sound a little angry and indignant about this…I am. If you don’t know, she was slated or appeared to be slated for Spider-Geddon and then on fucking Pride month, her image was removed from the cover.
Let me repeat that: Marvel removed the only Spider-Queer from the cover on fucking Pride month.
I feel like it is erasure because if anybody should be called a mentor to Miles Morales, it is this Jessica Drew. Spider-woman or Jessica Drew is the gender flipped clone of Peter Parker. Essentially a trans- Peter Parker. Yes, she is trans and a very weird and atypical way, but we are just have to accept how weird and strange she is because that is what makes her so beautiful.
Instead of writing out her origin, I’ll have her explain just how fucked up the Ultimate Universe was.
All right, I’ll summarize if you don’t quite get it. The CIA and the FBI fear SHIELD is becoming too powerful and everyone hates Nick Fury. So both branches of government want to check his power, but weren’t sure how. They intentionally superseded their jurisdiction and got involved in illegal genetic enhancing. The reason why Peter is so important is that his powerset is already stronger than Captain America while having none of the drawbacks that the supersoldier formula has. What do I mean? Remember in the first Captain America movie when they described why Red Skull was Red Skull and why Steve Rogers was Steve Rogers. The super soldier formula takes the worst parts of someone and sends it into overdrive. This is why Ultimate Hulk is so unstable and why generally most of the Ultimate Universe heroes are assholes except for a save few with Peter Parker being a sole exception(including Ultimate Steve who became more like a jock hardass because he was so insecure about his size). The issue is that recreating Spider-man is a freak accident hence why the government just opts to clone Peter instead of recreating the Green Goblin over and over again.
Back to Jessica Drew, she was one of the many Spider-clones and honestly was the only true success so cloning Peter Parker is now out of the question. And honestly, after reading all of that, I am pretty sure that this is your reaction.
I promise that one day, one day soon, I can just have a write up of the severely under-appreciated complexity of the Ultimate Universe that went from the implied corporate warfare arms race for the next Captain America, the intergovernmental struggle in said arms race, and the recreation of the vigilante filled wild west in the streets. For now, let’s focus on Jessica.
Jessica’s main issue is her identity crisis. She is a woman with the memories of a boy. This creates a dysphoria because she is only limited to Peter’s maturity of sexuality and also that she is not Peter Parker when all she knows is Peter Parker. She also has a huge beef with her creators who do not care about ethics in the search for money i.e. corporations.
This is where Jessica’s sexual orientation starts becoming more organic from her very inorganic origin. She starts wrestling with Peter’s already limited idea of heteronormative thoughts and exploring her own identity. Is she interested in women because she has the memories of Peter Parker or is she interested in men because she is a woman now? Shit like that.
This is Jessica Drew trying to hug Kitty Pryde. Immonen’s art does not do any favors in distinctness, I know. Same face was hardcore.
So yeah, she is a lesbian but because Marvel is filled with the brim with men, lesbian just means possibly bi so I can hook them up with any dude possible to them.
Jessica’s main purpose was to expose the ones who created her: Roxxon. She hated that people could just play God and create monstrosities such as her for the sake of profit.
Whatever. Anyways, Jessica…grew when Peter died. She started affirming her self. She met Miles.
Her relationship with Miles is that of mentor and mentee. Technically, Miles is her legacy and her responsibility. She ensures that Miles does not get over his head and get killed like Peter did.
The big issue is that Jessica has is terrible communication skills and won’t tell him what he needs to know directly.
And while she is hard on Miles, she genuinely cares about his well-being because she has all the memories of Peter Parker. She knows how hard it was to be Spider-man and tries to steer him from having the same fate as Peter Parker.
She takes a passive role in Miles’ tutelage. She is not holding his hands nor is she being overbearing. She just wants him to stay in a place where he won’t get killed or be over his head. And then Miles’ mom died and Miles subsequently quit.
Here is the thing. Jessica Drew, not Peter Parker, has been guiding Miles Morales since the inception of his character. She is the mentor Peter Parker fans want him to be for Miles, but ignore because she is not Peter Parker. And I am annoyed that Marvel is writing her out in favor of him.
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