Spider-Woman #19 // Review
Jess' kid just got kidnapped by an alien shapeshifter who was posing as...Jess. As strange as this sounds, it isn't the weirdest thing that's happened to Jess in the past few months. Jess deals with all the dangerous strangeness in Spider-Woman #19. Writer Karla Pacheco draws a complex, dramatic conflict to the page with wit and poise aided by the talents of artist Pere Pérez and colorist Frank D'Armata. Pacheco and company have fun with the weird complexities of Jess' past in another memorable issue with Jess.
Jess has a lot to deal with right now. Things have been complicated for her in the past. Things are going to be complicated for her in the future. Right now, she's dealing with an alien shapeshifter who had pretended to be her for a long time in the interest of taking over the world. So yeah...things are complicated for her now as well. The off-worlder in question has taken on her form and abducted her infant child, who happens to also have super-powers. The alien shapeshifter has gone a bit off in the head, and Jess needs to work out some aggressions of her own, so this isn't going to be easy for anyone.
The life of a long-lived superhero inevitably becomes hopelessly weird. The challenge for any writer is to respect the weirdness of that life in a way that doesn't alienate people who are just starting to read the comic for the first time. Pacheco keeps the conflict between Skrull and hero sharp enough to keep the conflict real while also drawing more than enough of the strangeness of Jess' life into a very appealing chase and slugfest with a lot of weird twists and turns that can only come with the creepiness of a super-powered alien having a psychotic episode. Pacheco brings it all together while keeping all the elements of the story from totally crashing into each other. And it's a lot of fun to watch.
The Spider-Woman-on-Spider-Woman battle could have been more visually confusing than Pérez allows it to be. While this may seem a bit like a lost opportunity...superheroes have a tendency to fight approximations of themselves A LOT, so it's nice to see Pérez focus in on some of the weird specifics of the drama in the midst of the action. An alien shapeshifter that can read the mind of its prey while totally losing it in the middle of a battle? THAT is fun to watch, and Pérez does a brilliant job of playing out the subtle nuance of that drama without compromising the bone-jarring action of a knock-down, drag-out fight between super-powered people. D'Armata has some breathtaking moments of mood sculpted into the color. There's a very specifically overcast feel to Manhattan as Spider-Woman beats the hell out of a Skrull wearing a delicately-rendered bright red costume. It's sharp stuff.
Things are only going to get weirder as Jess finds herself up against a team next issue. Pacheco has given the long and winding journey of Spider-Woman a vivid structure that builds cleverly on the long, strange history of the character. That she has been able to keep every moment distinct without devolving into an amorphous mass of weird plot elements is a tremendous victory. The 19th issue is one more proof of Pacheco's talent.
