I think it’s fair to say that one of the happiest accidents of 2014’s Spider-Verse event was the appearance of—and then surprising longevity of—Spider-Gwen. There were other dynamic and impactful moments, of course (not the least of which being the surprising return and subsequent movie-star making of Peter Porker, Spider-Ham), but the Gwen Stacy of Earth-65 all but begged for deeper exploration from her very first appearance on panel.
That exploration, chronicled in Spider-Gwen Epic Collection: Ghost-Spider, might be one of the most masterfully understated alternate-universe stories in modern memory. The joy of Gwen is that the premise never spends time holding the reader’s hand in terms of exposition or “previously on” summaries. The alternate universe is allowed to exist without the creatives or editorial pointing to it and nudging the reader; it simply is.
It’s a universe where capital ‘T’ Things happened that we weren’t there for, up to and including Gwen’s origin and Peter’s death. Aside from a two-page spread explaining the Captain America of Earth-65 in (the second) issue #2, the variations of our popular characters are allowed to exist without comparison. All of this has the effect of making Gwen’s reality feel justified rather than opposed to Earth-616.
Moreover, there’s something stylistically and kinetically unique about Earth-65, specifically under initial artist Robbie Rodriguez but continuing throughout the collection. Hectic sound effects in unruly magentas, easy cartoonish action, and expressive and distorted characters… the book oozes a sort of punk-rock cool to mirror Gwen’s (tenuous) connection to her band, The Mary Janes.
All that energy translates to a sometimes hokey, tongue-in-cheek world, wherein bumbling minor villains like The Bodega Bandit never quite reach the same level of threat as the local police. Detective Frank Castle, apparently wildly unstable in all universes, strikes up a militant vendetta against Spider-Gwen (known in-universe, obviously, as Spider-Woman), and it’s this conflict that hangs over all the super-powered minutia of Gwen’s life.
Marvel Comics
If the collection can be said to have a failing, it lies in the diversion of the narrative from this wonderful and curious universe by the mini-event Spider-Women, which sees Gwen exhaustively dimension hopping and getting mixed up in the affairs of her mentor, Jessica Drew, and amiable screwup Cindy Moon (Silk) of Earth-616.
While we love to see Jess kicking ass and playing it cool, the event all but halts the fun of Gwen’s narrative, preferring instead to water down what makes her book so special. It takes Gwen’s starting point of multiverse wonder (before even that became tedious) and reduces it to a pedestrian, everyday hassle. Worse, it commits the most egregious crime, one plaguing Marvel superheroines as if by wrong-headed mandate: it depowers our protagonist.
Though the depowered angle isn’t overplayed within this collection, it bears remarking upon here – and every time we see the trope utilized – in a world in which women are already constantly under threat (and continuously losing agency by way of violence and legislature), the idea that taking a woman’s superpower away might be compelling or interesting or meaningful is downright idiotic. Yet it seems to happen to every Marvel heroine, from America Chavez to (repeatedly, exhaustingly) Captain Marvel.
Marvel Comics
Nonetheless, Spider-Gwen: Ghost-Spider is a volume that exemplifies what is so special about the character. It provides a fantastic example of how to tell an alternate universe story smartly, and though it stumbles at the end it still excels in aesthetics.
(And for my Epic Collection fetishist peers, it should be noted that this book is the first of the Modern Era series. Though the cover design is fresh, the spine retains a unity so that these new books sit cleanly and beautifully next to the rest).
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