Superhero costumes come and go, but some stick around for decades. Spider-Man’s current costume is pretty close to his original look, with a few modifications. Until the Marvel Cinematic Universe came along, Captain America’s costume was still pretty close to his classic design.
But now it’s time for Jessica Drew aka Spider-Woman to get a new costume, since her full body spandex costume has been largely unchanged since 1977.
Over at USA Today, Marvel unveiled the new Spider-Woman costume which is making its debut in the Spider-Man Unlimited mobile game before appearing in the monthly Spider-Woman comic book series written by Dennis Hopeless.
Spider-Woman’s new look was designed by Kris Anka, the artist behind the horrendously awful Dazzler redesign in Uncanny X-Men, and the more eye-pleasing costumes that Psylocke and Storm currently wear. Hopeless and Spider-Woman editor Nick Lowe also contributed to the design, which keeps the web gliders and the spider logo from artist Marie Severin’s original design.
Lowe explained the change to USA Today by saying “Spider-Man isn’t really a detective — he swings around looking for trouble, whereas Jess needs to go and figure stuff out and dig things up, and you can’t really do that head to toe in spandex very well. To operate on the level she wants to, she needs something that can pass for semi-normal and she can turn it on to crazy if she needs to.”
Spider-Woman’s new costume will make its comics debut in Spider-Woman # 5, as Hopeless is joined by artist Javier Rodriguez for a new “street level” direction in March 2015.
Click on the images below to see the full sized reproductions of Anka’s designs for the new Spider-Woman costume!
