Issue(s): Spider-Woman #34, Spider-Woman #35
Cover Date: Jan-Feb 81
Title: "The wildfire express!" / "Farewell to L.A.!"
Credits:
Chris Claremont - Writer
Stephen Leialoha - Penciler
Al Milgrom & Bruce D. Patterson / Alan Gordon - Inker

Review/plot:
Chris Claremont takes over the Spider-Woman book, which has been in need of a good writer from the very beginning. Claremont wastes no time with a complete re-haul of the book's concept. Spider-Woman breaks her ties with Scotty McDowell and bounty hunting...

...and gets ready to move her from LA to San Francisco with Lindsay (a strong female supporting character, and the only one that Claremont keeps).

Along the way she runs into Hammer & Anvil...

...Mandroids...

...a forest fire...

...and Angar the Screamer.

Thankfully, Stephen Leialoha remains on the book. His art has been the highlight of recent issues, so now that he's coupled with a good writer this book will be in good shape. Unfortunately, Claremont will only be on the book for a year.

We're reminded in this story that Spider-Woman still has her pheromone problem. It's normally kept under check by the pills she got in Spider-Woman #19, but she briefly stops taking them in this arc and the results are immediate.

Quality Rating: B-

Historical Significance Rating: 2 - some changes in Spider-Woman's status quo

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• Hammer and Anvil are "two dudes who started their career by beatin' on the Hulk" in Hulk #182.
  
• The plot of issue #34 deals with Deterrence Research Corporation - Moses Magnum's company - and there are references to Giant-Size Spider-Man #4 and Power Man annual #1.
  
• DRC sends some Mandroids, first seen in Avengers #95, after Spider-Woman. Spider-Woman thinks to herself that they are a "much-improved model" which shows that she has a bit of an ego. Any Mandroids that Spider-Woman can take out in a couple of panels is vastly inferior to ones that can take on an entire team of Avengers.
  
• A brief history of Angar the Screamer: first appeared in Daredevil #100 and was finally defeated by Daredevil in Daredevil #105. Got sliced up by Colleen Wing in Iron Fist #5-7. At the time it was pretty clear that she killed him, but now Claremont says that "Colleen's samurai sword cut with surgical precision -- crippling without killing", and he's been in a Halwani prison ever since, until he is freed this issue by a mysterious benefactor that runs a criminal underground railroad in a Los Angeles amusement park.
  
• Spider-Woman has also been having visions of Morgan Le Fey, who Spider-Woman fought in Spider-Woman #6

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

I find Claremont's Spider-Woman's run not exactly good, but certainly revealing - of Claremont's strenghts and shortcomings as a writer if not necessarily of Spider-Woman's as a character. It helps that this is one of the comparatively few solo books that he wrote, and relatively early in his career.

Objectively, the stories themselves were sort of bland. And while Claremont is often praised for characterization, I find the merits to be heavily centered on concept as opposed to implementation. His writing (here as in most other books) is usually heavy-handed and lacking in nuance to the point of distraction. Still, he tends to have good character insights (less often with his own creations such as Ororo) and would probably have made a good line editor had he tried his hand at that line of work. His own ability to develop and implement those insights is often over-estimated. Much is hinted or even informed, not too much is actually developed organically on panel.

Still, he was a tremendous boon for Spider-Woman at this point. Gone are the troubles fighting serial murder clowns with gimmick gadgets and the need for hitchhiking during crime-fighting, which probably felt like characterization under Fleisher, but only made Jessica feel amateurish and incompetent. Scotty is allowed to develop, even if that leads to writing the character out of the book. So is Lindsay, who becomes more of a real character. Even Jessica becomes more proactive if perhaps reckless.

Claremont's run on Spider-Woman improved quality, but failed to make it a successful series. He jettisoned what wasn't working with Fleisher's run, but didn't retain any of the few successful elements from the title's earlier efforts. As a result, it's hard to see why an early fan of the series would have kept buying. The title is almost unrecognizable. These is no sense of continuity on this title which is soon going into its fourth year.

Claremont will make some good decisions and bad. Bringing back Hydra is a good decision, but making Viper Jessica's mom is bad. Bringing back Morgan Le Fay is bad - all the magic elements from Wolfman's run doesn't work. Establishing the Yakuza as long term villains for a west coast hero is good, but not in the strange way its done.

But the most important failure is that Claremont is the fourth straight main writer of this title who doesn't establish a good rogue's gallery. If he had brought back some of her more interesting villains (Brothers Grimm, Gypsy Moth or Nekra), it would have gone a long way to establish that while he built on Hydra and Yakuza as new foes. Instead, Spider-Woman is losing everything that made her distinct.

Claremont's work is strong, but he has a tendency to make everything "generic Claremont". He's a genre all his own. His work on X-Men made that seem very much part of the X-Men's identity. But reusing those elements again and again on other series didn't work as well.