Dragon Con 2019: You Need to Be Reading Absolute Comics Group’s WHITE WIDOW Series

We recently linked up with the creators of Absolute Comics Group‘s White Widow, Benny Powell and Jamie Tyndall, while at Dragon Con and, after speaking with them, we at Galaxtic Pop are even more excited than ever about this series!

If you are not familiar with the character, her real name is Gabrielle Garcia, a college student, looking to follow in her father’s footsteps in becoming a scientist. One night, her father emerges, having suffered a soon-to-be fatal gun shot wound, and injected her with the chemical that would lead to her becoming the White Widow, but also help her realize she’s living with a life-threatening disease as well! Garcia is ultimately a beautiful blend of Spider Woman‘s powers, with the looks and moves of Spider-Gwen (or Ghost-Spider) and the nanotechnology capabilities of Ironheart, but the artist behind the series will tell you differently, as the powers came before the design.

“It came from different variations of numerous characters that I have drawn over the years,” Tyndall said. “Once Benny and I started to spitball on character attributes, she was pretty much woven from there. We wanted a strong female character lead because we felt like that is what the industry needed at this time. She’s strong, fierce and highly intelligent. It’s really more of a science book than a superhero book, because there is a lot of nanotechnology and biotechnology references throughout the series.”

We know what the spider-themed characters are doing at Marvel and how they got their powers, but what makes this character so unique is how she got her powers, what makes up her powers and how she uses them. This is not an origin story spun from a radioactive spider bite, alien symbiotes or something made up in a lab, rather, this is a modified woman comprised of two scientific studies, which are actively being researched today, so it is ultimately spun from a truly unique origin story unlike one we’ve ever read.

“You find out in the second issue that (spoiler alert) she was born with a rare genetic disease, of which she did not know she had, called Krabbe Disease. She thought that her parents, who actually work for a mysterious science organization, were pharmacists, but that isn’t the case. The disease is fatal for infants, so they used some of their technology to try and cure her, using gene-splicing with a white widow spider and human DNA, which miraculously halts the disease,” said Powell. “It didn’t give her powers or anything, just corrected the enzyme deficiency in her body and caused her hair to turn white. Growing up, she was insanely athletic and never got sick. Once in college, she mysteriously gets a nose bleed and, unfortunately, the procedure wasn’t a cure, but a band-aid. It’s 20 years later and, through the use of nanotech, once she’s injected with that, is when things start to really change for Gabrielle and she develops her powers as the White Widow. All of her superpowers are comprised of nanotechnology spider silk, which is believed to be one of the strongest compounds on Earth.”

To give you an idea of the popularity of this book, White Widow #1 not only sold-out at the distributor level before even hitting shelves, but also reached its Kickstarter funding goal in less than 15 hours, making it the top indie comic out right now.

“We’re currently on issue No. 3 with enough stories to stretch us well beyond a year or more,” Powell stated. “The series is ongoing and will tie into our other family of books at Absolute Comics Group. Issue No. 5 will spinoff into a new series we’re launching called, I Make Boys Cry. It will serve as a two-part continuation of the White Widow story before becoming its own ongoing series. We’re trying to get back to a bimonthly schedule for all of our series, but they all feed into our Absolute Universe.”

Powell continued, “So, we want all of our books to have its own identity and flavor. With I Make Boys Cry (I.M.B.C.), we have a clan of all-female black-op assassins, that is not necessarily government-connected, but more along the lines of government-contracted, that has been around for hundreds of years. The girls all grow up at an academy where they garner their skills.”

The first issue, itself, comes with a laundry list of exclusive variants that are all insanely gorgeous, via both Powell and Tyndall, but also including some from friends in the industry as well. So, if you see these guys at a con, get as many as you can, because they go quick!

Click HERE for the duo’s current campaign for White Widow: Naked Truth.