Spider-Woman #5 highlights Jessica Drew as a person, and strives to depict how her career as a superhero fits into her very human life. With Dennis Hopeless' thoughtful script and Javier Rodriguez's bold art, Jess' world as a new mom springs to life. Read Full Review

One of my Crusading cohorts believes that Javier Rodriguez should be nominated for this years Harvey award. Whilst its easy to agree with him, I think the truth of the matter is that Spider-Woman could be the book of the year. Regardless of the constant reboots and the not so "All New" vibe that surrounds some of their main books, Marvel are clearly doing fantastic work with their female characters. Read Full Review

If you pick up one book from the Big Two this week, make sure it's this one. Read Full Review

This series has only gotten better thanks to the recent relaunch and the advent of Jessica Drew's new status quo as a pregnant, semi-retired hero. Read Full Review

I loved the personable feel of this issue. I liked seeing Jessica hang out with her superhero friends, I like the community that's being built across these Marvel comics (though maybe they should have added Silk to her friends, but we did get Hawkeye, Captain Marvel, She-Hulk and Hellcat). I like the friendship between Jessica and Porcupine (and I kind of wanted at least one of her friends to comment on the oddness of that friendship). Spider-Woman has been a great book since Hopeless started telling the stories he wanted. Read Full Review

Spider-Woman #5 is the best book I read this week, a book that is funny and warm and truthful, and above all executed very well by the creators. Read Full Review

Although not much plot happens in "Spider-Woman" #5, there's a great deal of character work going on. Taking the time off to let us see Jessica Drew deal with being a mother helps make her a stronger, more relatable character. No doubt, Hopeless, Rodriguez, and company are gearing up for something that will put the baby in danger (though wouldn't it be great if they didn't?), but for now, this simple story of a new mom juggling her work and home life, is engrossing. Read Full Review

This issue is the first issue of the Second Arc for this book, following Jessica Drew’s unfortunate run in with Skrulls in an Alpha Flight maternity ward that turned into the most wicked, and totally BAMF-ed out fight sequence I had seen in a comic for a really long time, now we get to see Spider Woman being very un-Spider Woman-ly, and being totally just a mom.
Even superheroes don’t have the whole parenting thing down, it turns out. And this is played out in dramatic fashion, and to COMPLETE success. I love the humor of this book, and the visuals are just off the charts. This book has something for literally everyone, but it also just really has a great big ol’ heart, and it’s not afraid to be emotional or sentimental or to just be a story about people, rather than a story about people with super powers fighting super villains, or using electro-kinetic blasts of energy to subdue baddies (which Spider Woman can do, y’all!).
I loved how the middle of this story sent Jessica on a night out with her friends, and how the speech bubbles eventually broke down to just emojis of what each person is feeling at that precise moment. I also love that much of the artwork is done with negative space, or just blacked out character profiles, which was s stylistic choice I did NOT expect. I thought that this book started out showing a disheveled and frantic new mom with puke on her everything and hair that looks more like a wild animal’s pelt (if that animal had ran through a maple syrup factory) but showed her cleaning up and dressing for the occasion and wearing some fun, while still subdued mom-adjacent clothing and brightly patterned leggings.
This book has been INSANELY fun, utterly charming and totally came out of nowhere to be one of the books that are my most anticipated reads each and every issue. I love this book, and you should, too!
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It's your typical "OMG, the new baby is too overwhelming for me" story, well executed. I particularly like the pages with all of the thought bubbles, what a creative way to tell the story.

Oh dear,

The art is great this issue and the first half of the comic is the prettiest public awareness information pamphlet I have ever seen. Shame we have seen it in every single film or tv show about having a new baby, and an even bigger shame that it is portrayed as a revelation here.

The second half involves Jess going out and trusting Porcupine with her baby. Wait what? Doesn’t he have a wife and child of his own that he keeps deserting? And Jess keeps having visions about how little she trusts him halfway through her evening. Maybe should have thought about that before? But wait, of course Porcupine turns out to be the most domesticated father ever in the history of the entire world, just not for his own family, but who cares eh, there’s nothing even remotely pathological about that.

Oh and She-Hulk worries about how many calories she has consumed with her drinking because we can’t forget to fat shame the big girl can we.

Then Jess finally tells her best friend she went to a Sperm Donor and congratulates herself on becoming a working single mummy. But not like Jessica Jones, or Julia Carpenter, or Jubilee, or Tigra, or...

And then the male creators take a whole page to congratulate themselves on their willies working and dude-splain how their readers should be careful before making a decision like the (not in the slightest bit patriarchal), decision they made on behalf of the fictional character because Jess had a close fictional support network, which if you work out the timeline doesn’t quite track but hey...go pregnant ladies, you show those no good rotten non-mummies just how awful they are. All women want babies. And women who keep saying no like Jessica don’t mean it. What do you mean that’s sick? Are you one of those no good non-mummies?

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