Spider-Woman is one of the Marvel Universe’s most powerful spider-heroes, thanks both to her combat training and her signature venom blast. Now, cosplayer J9Lives shows off Jessica Drew’s most devastating superpower in a new cosplay that confirms why everyone who messes with Spider-Woman ends up regretting it.
Posted to Instagram, J9Lives shows off the impressive Spider-Woman cosplay, saying “I wore this cosplay for about 15 minutes, but I was able to get at least ONE shot at GalaxyCon.” J9Lives is a dead ringer for Jessica Drew, and the Spider-Woman cosplay captures all the details of Drew’s classic comic book outfit. Perhaps most impressive of all is the mask, which perfectly recreates Spider-Woman’s large, ghostly-white eyes. Some excellent Photoshop effects portraying Spider-Woman’s blistering venom blast powers cap the whole piece off, resulting in a photo that looks like it could have been ripped straight from the comic book page – indeed, J9Lives shares W. Scott Forbes’ Spider-Woman #3 variant cover as inspiration.
Spider-Woman Unleashes Her Venom Blast In Comic Tribute
Created by Archie Goodwin and Marie Severin, Jessica Drew made her first appearance in 1977’s Marvel Spotlight #32. Initially given the origin of being a spider that was genetically-evolved into a human woman by the High Evolutionary, this was later retconned by writer Marv Wolfman in her self-titled series. There, it was revealed her original origin was a false memory implanted by the terrorist organization HYDRA, who brainwashed and trained her to use the abilities given to her by experimentation from her father. After she broke free of HYDRA’s brainwashing following an attempt on Alicia Masters’ life, Drew decided to use her powers and Spider-Woman persona for good. Although her popularity waned in the eighties and nineties, Drew returned to prominence when she joined the New Avengers in 2004, and she’s been a major part of the Marvel Universe ever since.
She’s one of Marvel’s most prominent Spider-Verse characters now, but the interesting thing about Jessica Drew is that she only exists because Marvel didn’t want anyone else to copyright the “Spider-Woman” name. It wasn’t uncommon for companies to protect themselves against others capitalizing off their trademarked characters, and Marvel Comics was no different. The late seventies saw Marvel’s cultural footprint reaching an even bigger audience thanks to the success of The Incredible Hulk TV show, and Stan Lee quickly introduced the character of She-Hulk in the comics so that they would own the character, should the network decide to create their own female version of the Hulk. So it was with Jessica, whose weird and wild history can be read as the hero finding her niche after being introduced for business reasons.
No matter why she was created, Jessica Drew’s Spider-Woman has gone on to become one of the Spider-Verse’s major players, wielding powers even the original Spider-Man can’t boast – most prominently, her Venom Blast, which zaps her enemies with bio-electricity. The wild power is seen in J9Lives’ cosplay, proving how visually spectacular Spider-Woman‘s powers can be.
