I really liked most of it, but somehow a woman has an emergency c-section and minutes later is kicking ass and has zero baby bump? There's suspension of disbelief, and then there's just plain ridiculous. ( )

Spider-Woman, aka Jessica Drew, is pregnant and working with Porcupine and Ulrich, the reporter. Her best friend is Captain Marvel. Now its a month before the baby is due and she is taking some time off and is bored to death. Carol, Captain Marvel, has recommended an alien hospital as being the best hospital to have her baby in and that she should check it out. So Jess goes one day to do just that.

When she finds the maternity ward, some Skrulls take it over and Jess is forced to fight back even though she promised her friends and her baby that she would take it easy. She destroys the two Skrull soldiers and wins the adoration of her fellow pregnant aliens. She gets ahold of Carol who is on her way, but she knows that more soldiers are on their way. She enlists the help of the pregnant aliens and they all take care of the soldiers. With the help of Carol and the hospital staff talking them through it, they get to a secure place but someone needs to go and talk to a doctor's head kept in storage to get the doors open in order for Carol and the help to get in and get them out. Jess does this but the head says it could take six hours to get the doors open.

Meanwhile, Carol lets slip that the Skrull are after a thirteen-year-old prince so Jess decides to rescue the prince even in her condition. Unfortunately, she goes into labor while she is rescuing him. They barricade themselves into a room with a doctor who performs a c-section on Jess who is determined to fight back after the surgery.

Can Jess fight her way out? Or will Carol make it in time to rescue them? The last section of the book is about Jess taking care of her baby and adjusting to life with a newborn and the lessons to be learned. Jess is a total badass even when she is crying over being worried about her baby. The artwork is amazing as it shows the very weird hospital that is inside a black hole. This book has humor and lots of action. I loved it and I give it five out of five stars. ( )

New favorite! Thx GC.

My review? Read this, you'll be so pleased you did. ( )

Spider-Woman: Shifting Gears, Volume 1: Baby Talk collects Amazing Spider-Man no. 1 and Spider-Woman vol. 6, nos. 1-5. Following the events of Secret Wars, writer Dennis Hopeless and artist Javier Rodriguez relaunched Spider-Woman as part of the All-New, All-Different Marvel brand. Newly-pregnant Jessica Drew continues to work with Ben Urich of the Daily Bugle and Roger Gocker, the Porcupine, who she's training as a superhero both in order to reform him and to take her place when she goes on maternity leave. Hopeless and Rodriguez continue to bring their fun, stylized take to the story, especially as they involve Captain Marvel and an alien hospital. The choice to make Spider-Woman pregnant could have been gimmicky, but Hopeless and Rodriguez use it to add a family dimension to Jessica's world with Carol Danvers, Ben Urich, and Roger Gocker serving as a surrogate family. The story recalls the best parts of Jessica's friendship with Lindsay McCabe during Chris Claremont's run on the 1978-1983 series. They continue to add their own touch to the character in sleek, fun stories that will delight old fans and new. ( )

Spider Woman: Shifting Gears Vol 1: Baby Talk written by Dennis Hopeless and illustrated by Javier Rodriguez is another volume 1 following, chronologically Vol 2: New Duds, which I previously reviewed. Because randomly restarting numbering schemes is just so Marvel. Anyway, this is the volume with the pregnant Spider-Woman on the cover, and all five issues contained inside it deal with the one story arc of Jessica being (very) pregnant and then having a baby.

This was a strange read, not least because it started with an eight-month pregnant Spider-Woman and no explanation as to how or why. However, having gotten past the surprise — helped by the cover — the story takes us to interesting places. First Jessica Drew must deal with having to step back from her usual superhero PI work. Since her superpowers didn't vanish, she finds it hard to hold back because she can still beat up bad guys and the only thing stopping her is the risk to the baby if something more dire than petty criminals show up.

The story takes us through the boredom of pre-partum maternity leave, a requisite bit of action involving aliens and saving a bunch of other pregnant people, then a look at Spider-Woman's life as a mother. I enjoyed the middle part of the story the most — the action and the butt-kicking while pregnant. Overall, I thought this volume raised some interesting issues regarding motherhood, friendship, work and the sense of self. That said, the ending was a little sudden and did not follow through on some of the subversive ideas that were being built up earlier on.

Nevertheless, this was a fun read and I recommend it to fans of Spider-Woman. The pregnancy is dealt with better than I expected and we do find out why/how she got pregnant in the end. (We don't find out why everyone expects the baby to be a normal human though...) Spider-Woman has had some crappy storylines and this one is not so bad, even if it was unexpected when it launched.

4 / 5 stars

You can read more of my reviews on my blog. ( )