Spider-Gwen, Does Whatever A Spider…Erm….

– Spiraling out of the recent Marvel ‘Spiderverse’ event is the unlikeliest spin-off of all; Spider-Gwen, in which the parallel Earth counterpart of Peter Parker’s long-deceased love, Gwen Stacy, has taken up the mantle of Spider-Woman – except Marvel can’t call the series that, because they’ve already got a Spider-Woman; several, in fact! The Frog Queen’s Amy Brander snagged a few words with Spider-Gwen’s author, Jason Latour…

– The Spiderverse is expanding and why shouldn’t it!? Everybody is jumping up and down for Spider-Gwen’s on-going series, slated to hit the stands February 25th.

Issue number one hails a bitchin’ script from Jason Latour with art from Robbi Rodriguez.

Marvel is issuing three pretty fantastic variant covers for this launch  from Adam Hughes, Skottie Young, and Kris Anka.

I, of course had questions, and got to talking to Jason Latour! Here’s what we discussed:

TFQ: What’s it like to put your brushes and tools aside for this story, and let another artist interpret your story into images?

Jason: It’s relaxing. No. I’m kidding. At this point I’ve written enough stuff for other people to know how to (mostly) turn off my tendency to be a micromanaging artist and let the other collaborators do their thing. Sometimes you get burned, but most of the time It’s exciting to watch someone else take your ideas and breathe life into them. In this case I’ve known Robbi and Rico a very long time, and I’m really familiar with what they can do. So it helps to have that kind of trust in the art team.

TFQ: Spider-Gwen has MY PERFECT COSTUME. I mean, I think she stole the costume of my dreams. How did the team develop her outfit?

Jason: The bulk of the credit goes to Robbi for that design. When he started I gave him the prompt that I wanted her to be mysterious, to feel the same way that Ditko’s Spider-Man felt in the 60s. Where you could see, from a certain perspective, why the “Menace” tag fit. But also it was important that her gender or her race not be the sole defining characteristic of the design. So we wanted her face covered for the costume to work as a design. So from there Robbi took the reins, and passed it back to me a few times just for my input.

TFQ: Some people are critical of female superheroes with their own title series. What would you say to those people that would sway them to read Spider-Gwen?

Jason: I’d say it’s 2015. There’s room for every kind of superhero you can dream up. It won’t kill you to set aside one of the dozens of male superheroes you read and maybe give something new a try. Catch up, or get left behind.

TFQ: With the perceived threat of Secret Wars, which in my opinion has a lot of fans freaking out unduly, what’s in Spider-Gwen’s future?

Jason: Well I can’t address it directly right now, but hopefully I will be able to soon. Just know that I plan on writing Gwen for a long time, and no one at Marvel’s told me I should be thinking otherwise.

TFQ: Can you tell us what else you’re working on right now? 

Jason: I’m still the artist and co-creator of Southern Bastards at Image Comics. It’s old men hitting each other with sticks and eating BBQ. If you haven’t read it you should. I think you’ll like it.