Jessica Drew, Trademark Establisher
Introduced in the pages of Marvel Spotlight #32 in February 1977, Jessica was originally never meant to be more than a single-issue character, established as Spider-Woman so that Marvel could stop rivals from publishing a female riff on Spider-Man (not that they hadn’t gotten into those hot waters before themselves). In her original origin, Jessica is a brainwashed Hydra agent code-named Arachne, and revealed to have been a genetic experiment by the meddlesome scientist Herbert Edgar Wyndham, known by his alter ego, the High Evolutionary. Also: she’s not actually a human. A spider, Jessica was the first female experiment by the Evolutionary, evolved into a human form with spider abilities. Shunned by her fellow New Men, who retained more of their animalistic origins, Jessica fled to live a life of her own in Wundagore, before she was abducted and brainwashed by Hydra.
