Review by Ian Keogh
There’s a feeling of always the bridesmaid, but never the bride about Jessica Drew. Sure, some of her material has been far better than anyone could expect from a character created as trademark protection, but she’s never made that leap to someone who always has a series no matter what. Unfortunately this sprightly run from Karla Pacheco and Pere Pérez couldn’t break that jinx, grinding to a halt after four readable volumes.
Pacheco opens with a very entertaining sixteenth birthday party sequence, but then looks back to the experiments that first resulted in Jessica becoming Spider-Woman. It’s been so long ago that we may well have forgotten those experiments were carried out by her own father intending she become a super-powered Hydra agent, and yet that’s not even the most disturbing part of Bad Blood. The title refers to an infection Jessica contracts, but there’s more to it than at first seems the case, and deception and manipulation become the order of the day as Pacheco pulls apart some certainties Jessica believed she had.
Pérez is almost a barometer superhero artist in this opening volume. He tells the story well, his people are credible and the action scenes work, yet they’re efficient rather than spectacular, although the novelty of panels filled around a spider motif is eye-catching. The best variation is a chapter ending pin-up page where Pérez creates the pattern from bullets.
Some readers might not like Pacheco’s characterisation of Jessica and Spider-Woman as constantly swearing. It’s represented by the traditional selection of symbols in the dialogue, but we all know what she means. Otherwise the plot is a little too reliant on surprise revelations pulling the rug away, but that’s not to deny some of them are good, and Pacheco earns extra credit in Bad Blood at least for this not being Spider-Woman constantly being concerned about the safety of her infant child. The infection problem isn’t that easily solved, so although much has changed, it remains to take us into King in Black.
