Question!
Okay, I have a stupid question which totally betrays my ignorance of certain segments of the Marvel Universe.
Why does Jessica Drew have pheromone powers?
I mean, she's identified with a SPIDER. I have to say, when I think of spiders, "pheromones" are hardly the first thing that comes to mind.
Gotta say, the nifty art of the Menzoberranzan computer game aside, I've never thought of spiders as particularly sexually appealing.
I'm not going to bitch about the pheromone thing in and of itself, since hell, there are quite a few male heroes that also seem to use attraction based powers. I'm just curious about the logic and neither Wikipedia or Marvel.com seem particularly enlightening.
So can anyone fill me in?
Why does Jessica Drew have pheromone powers?
I mean, she's identified with a SPIDER. I have to say, when I think of spiders, "pheromones" are hardly the first thing that comes to mind.
Gotta say, the nifty art of the Menzoberranzan computer game aside, I've never thought of spiders as particularly sexually appealing.
I'm not going to bitch about the pheromone thing in and of itself, since hell, there are quite a few male heroes that also seem to use attraction based powers. I'm just curious about the logic and neither Wikipedia or Marvel.com seem particularly enlightening.
So can anyone fill me in?
posted by kalinara @ 7:47 PM
6 Comments:
At May 23, 2010 10:25 PM,
Anonymous said…
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/email/html/8807news4.html ?
But yeah, not anything I think of first either.
At May 23, 2010 10:36 PM,
Seangreyson said…
One spider related connection: Some spiders eat their mates, and thus draw mates in to their eventual deaths. Maybe that's the connection.
Of course most of the origins of her powers I've seen have only a loose connection to the spider thing anyway.
At May 23, 2010 10:40 PM,
kalinara said…
Bookslide: I stand corrected! Thanks!
It'd be funnier if it worked only on spiders, but it's good to know there's actual logic!
At May 24, 2010 12:11 AM,
Sleestak said…
Originally, it explained why people had an instant dislike of her, particularly other women. The story lines fed off her angst about it. Since she is attractive they had to find some reason why women hated her on sight. It went into detail in the Nekra story arc.
At May 24, 2010 1:38 AM,
Derrick said…
It is just attributed to some other spider, allowing her to use the Spider-Woman moniker but be different than Spidey.
At May 29, 2010 11:21 AM,
Anonymous said…
Okay, it's been a long time since I was last active on the internet, so I hope I'm doing this right. I tried earlier, and managed to screw it up, but because I love spiders and I enjoy your blog, I'm going to try again.
Female web-weaving spiders do use pheramones to attract mates. Since web-weaving spiders are often nearly blind and don't move around much once they've found a good place to build a web, pheramones are the only way these spiders can find each other when it's time to mate.
So Marvel got it right, but I kind of wonder if they were just lucky. It's a pretty obscure piece of information. I found it in a university ethology paper a few years ago, but I can't seem to find it now to provide you with a link to back up my statement.
Anyway, I hope that answers your question, and I'm sorry I can't provide you with a place to check my facts.
Denise Turner.
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