OK, it’s been a couple weeks since the Madame Web movie came out, and given its reception, it’s probably streaming right now in the vain hopes that anyone might pay to see it.
I mean, I saw it, but I like to pretend I’m a movie critic. I’m pretty sure the only people who have seen it are suckers, fools, movie critics, and Ryan with his family.
Cassandra Webb…yeah, named for a prophetess from Greek mythology and, um, webs, first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #210 in November of 1980. The creation of artist John Romita Jr. and writer Denny O’Neil…wait, Denny O’Neil wrote Spider-Man? I know he did some work for Marvel, but I only really knew he wrote Iron Man comics for a period. That guy was one hard-traveling comic book writer. OK, where was I? Oh yeah. Madame Web. She’s an old blind woman, paralyzed, but also a mutant that had some psychic powers that allowed her to see the future. Her husband, Jonathan Webb, built her a special life support system to keep her alive despite the various degenerative diseases that caused her various physical ailments, and said system looked a lot like a spiderweb.
Anyway, as an ally of Spider-Man and not the X-Men despite the whole “she was a mutant” thing, she mostly gave Spidey needed advice and warnings as needed. She had a granddaughter named Charlotte Witter who took up the Spider-Woman name at one point, but she was the evil one which is probably why I A) have never heard of her and B) didn’t see her in that crappy movie with the other three people in the screening room with me. At various points she regained her youth, may or may not remember Spider-Man is Peter Parker, and was eventually killed when Kraven the Hunter or one of his kids went hunting spiders.
Wait, Sony is putting out movies with both Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter this year. Why didn’t they make ’em a part 1/part 2 thing? That might have been cool if the extended Sony Spiderverse wasn’t just a really dumb idea to begin with.
Anyway, Madame Web was also among the many dead folks temporarily revived by Ben Reilly when he decided to be the Jackal instead of the Scarlet Spider because no one really likes Ben Reilly I guess. I could ask Jimmy. Then again, her mutant status means the X-Men could have revived her if that Krakoa immortality thing still exists. I lost track.
I think the point is Madame Web is one of Spider-Man’s lesser known allies that somehow got a movie. I know her best from the 90s Spider-Man: The Animated Series where she was voiced by Stan Lee’s wife Joan, and for all I knew when I saw her, she was an original character created for the show. I mean, she wasn’t, but that’s how little awareness I had for the character back then…and for the most part, today as well.
And somehow, Sony decided this character deserved her own movie as portrayed by Dakota Johnson.
Man, I wonder why that studio can’t get people to go to their Spider-adjacent movies with great decision-making on display like that…
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