Omissions and Additions: The High Evolutionary and Jessica Drew

 

I always appreciate feedback on the posts I produce, especially if it leads me to learn something new. And so today I would like to make a small supplemental entry to my post about The High Evolution and Jessica Drew. Thanks to Richard at the MC2 A Day blog for pointing out these omissions and additions. Without further ado, let us jump straight into it!

 

As I noted last time, the High Evolutionary blasts off into space with his Knights of Wundagore in The Mighty Thor #135 (1966), while the evolved cow-woman Bova remains behind with the child Jessica Drew as seen in West Coast Avengers Annual #3 (1988). However, we first see Jessica under the care of Bova in a flashback from Spider-Woman #20 (1979) where we see it did not take long for her to realize she was unique among the New Men of Wundagore who ostracized her, keeping with her earliest origin story. This is where we first see a young Jessica alongside Bova watching the High Evolutionary’s ship leave earth. We also first learn that Bova raised Miss Drew to maturity before she was sent to an orphanage in a nearby village to be nurtured by her own kind. From here, the events play out similar to previous depictions, with Jessica being ostracized even among humans before her deadly bio-electric venom-blast leads the villagers to attempt to destroy her.

 

Jessica is rescued by the leader of Hydra’s European branch, Count Otto Vermis. Outfitted with a special costume and trained, Drew was brainwashed into believing she was an evolved spider in order to alienate her further, ensuring her loyalty to Vermis. Jessica recalls how she escaped Hydra’s clutches and learned more of her past from Mordred and a magician named Magnus, noting she only knows what these men had revealed to her. This issue also marks the inevitable meeting between Spider-Man and Spider-Woman, with Peter Parker giving Jessica’s super heroic alias the benefit of the doubt in a burglary case due to his own storied history of misunderstandings and bad publicity (Spider-Woman #20).  

 

Jumping back just a few short months to Avengers #186, published in May 1979, Bova recounts her own origin to the Avenger named Pietro Maximoff aka Quicksilver, beginning with the High Evolutionary evolving her as one of his first projects and tasking her with the caring for the children his New Men. Bova notes that the High Evolutionary was preoccupied with matters coinciding with the unexplained return of his assistant Jonathon Drew. Via these flashbacks we see that while Jonathon and the High Evolutionary were occupied, the pregnant woman Magda arrived seeking asylum and the two became very close over the weeks preceding the birth of Magda’s twins: Pietro and Wanda, later known as the Scarlet Witch. During their birth, Bova noted Wanda’s tiny form mirrored the mysterious lights which filled the sky that night. These strange lights, of course, relate to the manifestation of Chthon.

 

Shortly after the twins are delivered, Magda disappears, leaving only a note expressing fear that her unnamed husband might force the revelation of her children’s existence from her if she remained alive. This is a direct reference to Uncanny X-Men #125 and the master of magnetism himself, Magneto, but we will save talking about him for another time. We then glimpse the subsequent tragic events involving Madeline and Robert Frank and their own stillborn child, followed by the High Evolutionary appearing before Django and Marya Maximoff to entrust them with Wanda and Pietro. With Pietro unable to recollect his childhood clearly, Bova relates her own sense of emptiness when she elected to remain behind ‘for…personal reasons’ as the High Evolutionary’s Wundagore Citadel left for the stars. This is evidently in reference to the aforementioned Spider-Woman #20 and Bova’s duty as carer for the young Jessica Drew (Avengers #186).

 

It must be noted that all these interconnected and overlapping characters and events were woven together by the writer (or co-plotter) of Avengers #186, Spider-Woman #20 and the various ‘Evolutionary War’ Annual’s back-up stories which detail the history of the Herbert Wyndham aka the High Evolutionary; none other than the keeper of continuity himself, Mark Gruenwald. Rest in Peace, Mr Gruenwald.

 

Until I become miraculously infallible like Mobius M. Mobius, I remain

 

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