| Spider-Woman |
 |
| Name: | Jessica Drew |
| Gender: | Female |
| Place of Birth: | London, England, United Kingdom |
| Age: | Old. Looks late 20s. |
| Aliases: | Spider-Woman |
| Origin: | Altered Human |
| Origin Earth: | 616 |
| Present Location: | NYC |
| Occupation: | Private Investigator |
| Team: | Avengers |
| Alignment: | Hero |
| Significant Other(s): | Significant Other(s) |
| Powers and Abilities: | Summary of Abilities |
| Portrayed by: | None |
- Jess fell ill as a young girl, in 1931, affected by the radioactive uranium her father Jonathan Drew was experimenting with alongside Dr. Herbert Edgar Wyndham who would later become the High Evolutionary.
- Her father and Dr. Wyndham cooperated on an emergency treatment, injecting her with her father's experimental spider serum, subjecting her to Wyndham's evolving ray, and then placing her in extended suspended animation.
- While in the genetic accelerator, she aged at an incredibly reduced rate, decades later, when she was released, she was a teenage girl. Jessica grew up on Mount Wundagore, under the care of Lady Bova, one of the High Evolutionary's New Men.
- Jess became involved with a young villager, and when startled by his father while in an intimate embrace, she accidentally discharged her bioelectricity, killing her lover.
- Fleeing an angry mob after the incident Count Otto Vermis rescued her. HYDRA, under the control of Count Otto Vermis, recruited her as an agent.
- Using brainwashing, and mental manipulation HYDRA convinced her she was not human, but actually an evolved spider. While serving HYDRA they put her through rigorous espionage and martial arts training.
- During this time she went by the alias Arachne and she battled S.H.I.E.L.D. and its director Nick Fury, who revealed Vermis as a cold-blooded killer, and HYDRA's true nature.
- She quit HYDRA, betrayed them, and fled. Seeking to break free of the mental scars left by HYDRA, Jess started a life on West Coast.
- Some measure of success is had in the City by the Bay. She started up a private investigation service and did work on the side as Spider-Woman. She would become known as the 'dark angel of San Francisco' during this time. She made friends, she made enemies, and she probably made some frenemies, too.
- She fought Viper, who tried to convince her that she was her mother and Jessica's still not sure what to make of that. But, all good things must come to an end and life by the bay ended after a round of losing, regaining, and then struggling with fluctuating powers.
- Seeking a more permanent solution to her fluctuating powers, Jess accepted an offer from Madame Hydra. HYDRA wanted her to join SHIELD so she could gather information from them.
- After a chat with Nick Fury, she joins SHIELD and proceeds to play the role of double-agent. SHIELD feeds her limited information to pass to HYDRA and she passes HYDRA-related information to SHIELD. It's a win-win all around until Nick goes missing for a while.
- Around this time, Jess is abducted and replaced by the Skrull Queen, Veranke, and the face of Spider-Woman (and costume) would come to be recognized as the face of an interstellar invasion. Joy. Jess's life spiraled into a bit of a funk after returning from that, until she got the opportunity to vent a bit as a member of SWORD, hunting down remaining Skrulls. That didn't last long either, and eventually Jess accepted an offer to join the New Avengers during Norman Osborn's dark reign.
Jessica Drew doesn't know her place in the world. She's restless, anxious, and always in search of that place where she 'fits'. When she thinks she's found it, something inevitably goes wrong and everything falls apart. Jess often finds herself guided not by her own thoughts or whims, but by those of the people around her as an attempt to feel like part of the group.
While she might get a bit down in the dumps and mopey sometimes, Jess isn't a quitter, and she doesn't give up. Sure, sitting around her apartment, she might lament the shit life's tossed her way, but when it comes down to the wire, Jess is a survivor who's seen damn near everything and won't stop.
Danger? She can handle it. In fact, she thrives on the rush of adrenaline and the thrill of getting out of a bad spot by just a thread. These situations make her feel alive, make something in her feel like her very existence has a purpose after all.
She's smart. She's sassy. She tells it like it is and sod off if you can't handle it, you twit. It's a nice bit of armor she wears and she usually relies on this aspect of her personality to cover for all the nasty imperfections underneath.
A bit baffling maybe, since she's smart, superpowered, beautiful, and beyond, but Jess has some lingering level of depression and anxiety thanks to her history. She does a fair job of hiding it usually, but HYDRA's brainwashing when they recruited her has proved, even all these years later, incredibly damaging. A lot of Jessica's self-esteem is tied up in her powers. They're what make her her, and the couple of times she's lost them have been particularly rough.
Jessica Drew is largely motivated by finding her place in the world, and doing what she can to make it a better, safer place. Every once in a while, there might be a selfish detour, but deep down where it counts, Jess is good people.
Jessica Drew's only real goal is largely what motivates her. Finding the place she belongs, and proving that she's worth something by using her powers to help people.
A result of the combination of special serum derived from spider blood and certain radiation treatments received to save her life from the Uranium poisoning, Jess awoke from her stasis with an enhanced musculature. Her whole body has been strengthened and her lean frame is now able to lift approximately 7 tons.
Her enhanced musculature also gives Jess the ability to use it, generally for longer than needed. She can use her full strength for a full half hour without the first signs of fatigue setting in.
Not only stronger and tougher, Jess is also quicker. Her body can react to a thought, noise, scent, any trigger, practically quicker than she can process the thought. Her reflexes are far beyond anything a human could manage.
Jess can take a punch. Or ten. Or a car hitting her. The last one would hurt, but given her reflexes, a split second to react and prepare to move with the impact helps to mitigate a lot of the damage.
Simply amazing, Jess's speed, when it comes to little movements, like punching, kicking, or getting out of the way. She can move almost too quickly for the eye to see. Paired with her incredible reflexes, this enables her to dodge most blows, or attacks, even gunfire at times, if it isn't from point-blank range.
Jess's enhanced physiology has proven to be immune to most known toxins, poisons, and drugs. Since her bout of poisoning as a child, she has also become totally immune to radiation, and could walk into the aftermath of nuclear fallout without a problem afterwards.
Generally more annoyance than helpful superpower, Jess emits a combination of natural pheromones. These tend to make people inclined to like her, /really/ like her, while making others view her as competition or a threat and generally results in an unnatural anger aimed her way.
Pretty simple, much like Spider-Man, Jess's body is capable of secreting an unidentified, superpowered kind of adhesive from her pores. Paired with her enhanced physique, she can cling to various surfaces from various bodyparts and it's not just via hands and feet. This is also helpful when picking up those things that weigh a ton or two.
Jessica Drew's body produces a sort of bio-electric energy that she can harness and unleash as an attack. This green energy is usually emitted from her hands and is capable of stunning or killing normal humans in a single blast if she puts enough 'oomph' into it.
Jess is a SHIELD agent. She doesn't have the uppermost clearance, but she is, generally, in fairly good standing, and as one of the few agents who is both superpowered and fully trained as an actual espionage agent, usually has access to a fair amount of information from the organization.
Jess isn't one of the core members or a face of the group, by any means, but she has worked with the Avengers in the past and knows (if she could muster the courage to do it) she can call on a number of them for help if she ever needs it.
Jess's costume is less spandex-y these days, having traded in the outright 'clearly a heroine' look for something that can switch from streetwear to hero-ing on the fly. The important thing is the new outfit still has a strong mesh webbing that can be unfolded between her arms and sides, giving her 'wings' of a sort in an instant so she can glide.
Former HYDRA assassin turned PI turned SHIELD agent turned double-agent, Jess had a great deal of training while under HYDRA's thumb, and while she might not be Black Widow, she's still one of the better spies in the world. Disguises, tracking people down, breaking and entering, information gathering, whatever it might be, if it comes to mind when you think 'spy', Jessica Drew is most likely fairly adept at it.
While stronger and faster than any regular person, Jess doesn't just flail that power around randomly when it comes time to fight. HYDRA hired the best of the best to train her in various forms of combat years ago. Martial arts, melee weapons, firearms, Jess may not use the latter two very often, but she certainly can if the need arises.
Jessica spent approximately 70 years in stasis, with the High Evolutionary playing various educational tapes for her. 70 YEARS. Jess might not be up to date on all the slang and what have you, but she can speak a lot of languages. Further enhanced with her training as a special agent of HYDRA, Jess seems to have a gift for tongues.
Being a spy, and then opening her own detective agency, Jess has become a pretty good P.I. She knows how to put things together, and is very good at solving puzzles, or mysteries. Working as a P.I. has made Jess pretty good at finding people too. She tends to note small details that other people might miss, or overlook as being insignificant.
Madame Hydra, on-again off-again leader of the massive, global less-than-savory organization of the same name is one of Earth's most dangerous bipolar psychopathic murderers. And joy of joys, sometimes she gets it in her head that she is genuinely Jessica Drew's mother. Coupled with all her other history with HYDRA, and it just all makes one very big mess Jess wishes would disappear, but instead constantly finds a way to interrupt her life.
Jess hasn't led a normal life. She wasn't raised by family, she was raised by Bova. Bova the cow-lady. Cow. Lady. And that was after she spent 70 some years in suspended animation, getting radiation poison cleansed from her system. Her aging was slowed in the stasis, but she went in as a small girl and came out as a teen, near adulthood. She never had a childhood, quite literally. She killed her first lover on accident with her powers, then got recruited into HYDRA and brainwashed into thinking she was actually a spider they'd experimented on and turned into a person….Yes, it sounds absurd, but so does everything else. The story goes on and on in a similar fashion, with the most recent, notable abnormality being that her face and identity got used by the leader of an alien invasion. She keeps a lid on it sometimes, but there are almost countless cracks in Jessica Drew's psyche that might fracture even further with the right trigger.
Jessica Drew is Spider-Woman, and while not known to the general public at large…HYDRA, SHIELD, and probably a dozen less expansive information networks and organizations have extensive files on her. If somebody wants the ID of Spider-Woman badly enough, they could get it.
To those not 'in the know', Jess has a pretty good rep as a superheroine and SHIELD agent. To those with a bigger file, she's known to be a bit…ambiguously-aligned, though she tends to end up on the side of good almost all of the time.
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