Over the past few years, Marvel Comics has taken strides to improve LGBTQ+ representation on panel and behind the scenes, but 16 years after introducing their first queer Spider-Hero no one seems to remember her. Now seems like a more appropriate time to revitalize the character than ever ahead of this fall's The End of Spider-Verse event. Just as well, she's not the only Spider variant in the LGBTQ+ community anymore, so her long-overdue return would create a feeling of solidarity for any fellow queer Spider-Heroes in the Marvel Multiverse.

Queerness has a long and intriguing history with comics, though for a long time LGBTQ+ identities had to remain subtextual due to the censorship of the Comics Code Authority. Even though Marvel Comics abandoned the Comics Code back in 2001, expanding queer representation on Earth 616 is often a slow-going and irregular journey. In particular, Web Weaver, Marvel's first gay Spider-Man, is not scheduled to debut on-panel until later this year. Web Weaver's welcome into the Spider-Verse fold is worth celebrating, and it also tees up the opportunity to reintroduce readers to the first openly LGBTQ+ Spider-Hero, the Ultimate Spider-Woman.

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Ultimate Spider-Woman, otherwise known as Jessica Drew of Earth 1610, was co-created by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley. She made her debut in Marvel's Ultimate Universe in 2006's Ultimate Spider-Man #98 by Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Bagley, Cory Petit, and Ralph Macchio. A genetically altered clone of Peter Parker with all of Peter's powers and memories, Jessica Drew is essentially the Ultimate Universe's twist on the Ben Reilly of Marvel's Prime Universe. The key difference between the Jessica Drew of Earth 1610 and the Ben Reilly of Earth 616 is small yet significant. Jess's DNA is altered to be slightly different from Peter's, but only to the extent that she's assigned female at birth. Pieces of her queerness are present from her beginning, but it would be years until Jessica made these aspects of herself explicit.

Ultimate Spider-Woman talks gender and sexuality.

There are two queer identities that Ultimate Spider-Woman resonates with the most. After a period of adjustment from waking up as Peter in a body that was assigned female, Jessica does take ownership of her new name and she/her pronouns as a part of her identity. Specifically, she tells Miles Morales "I'm not Peter Parker. I'm not even a boy. I'm Jessica Drew," in 2013's Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #25 from Brian Michael Bendis, David Marquez, Cory Petit, and Mark Paniccia. Though her gender journey is unique due to comic book super-science, from Jessica's perspective she lived a significant portion of her life as a boy until she woke up one day to realize that wasn't quite accurate anymore. The only true difference between her journey and that of a regular trans woman/nonbinary person is that Jessica transitioned first, and the realization of her gender came after. The end result was the same, Jessica just happened to experience the journey in a different order than some of her trans sisters.

While the Ultimate Spider-Woman is trans, Jess's sexuality is the other key aspect of her queerness, and her truth came to light in 2014. In All-New Ultimates #4, by Michel Fiffe, Amilcar Pinna, VC's Clayton Cowles, and Mark Paniccia, Jessica is having a beach day with the girls and discloses her ongoing gender journey with them. While her sense of self is sometimes a complicated discussion, Jess has decided to follow what feels right for her romantically and sexually. Of course, her friends ask what feels right for her, and Jess responds "girls." She doesn't directly say, "I'm a trans lesbian," but the conversation reflects a more realistic version of coming out.

Like anyone in the LGBTQ+ community, Jessica Drew from Earth 1610 is more than the sum of her queer identities. Yet, when discussing Marvel's queer representation, Ultimate Spider-Woman is often overlooked as a trans lesbian. In part, this may be due to the stories set in the Ultimate Universe being few and far between after Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribić's Secret Wars event in 2015. Still, the introduction of new queer Spider-Heroes like Web Weaver and Dan Slott's upcoming The End of Spider-Verse event signal a time that is ripe for bringing Ultimate Spider-Woman back to readers new and old.

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