Jess’ friends had left her alone. This is fine: she needed some time to herself. They left her in prison, though. Suffice it to say, she hasn’t been herself lately. She was going berserk. She may not be totally ready to get back to work, but her enemy has shown-up, and she wants to...help her. It might not be the best time to trust someone else, but it IS the eighth issue of Spider-Woman. Writer Karla Pacheco continues a thoroughly entertaining run with Jess in an issue brought dynamically to the page by artist Pere Pérez. The old cliche of a hero reluctantly teaming-up with a villain finds new life in the hands of Pacheco and Pérez in another fun adventure with Jess. 

Jess has been difficult to get along with lately for a whole string of reasons. She’s exhausted, and she’s angry, and she’s been imprisoned by her friends. And now the one person to let her out is her enemy: Octavia Vermis. Octavia hands Jess a hypo filled with something to calm her down. Jess spikes the syringe and instantly calms down. Why would her enemy want to help her out? Both Jess and Octavia have a common enemy: Hydra. Octavia wants help breaking into a Hydra facility. If they get through with that, there are a few other places she wants to go, including a Stark facility and a lair at the bottom of an active volcano. Y’know: she wants a little help running a few errands. 

Besides maintaining her characteristic wit and brisk pacing, Pacheco is working on a story with a great many layers. Spider-Woman is not only teaming-up with a villain--she’s doing so after having had a fight with her friends. She’s diving into a kind of darkness that could easily see her becoming exactly the kind of villain Octavia is. The questionable actions of hero and villain make for an interesting layer above the action and humor that make Pacheco’s work so much fun on the page. 

Pérez smashes drama through the dynamics of quickly-paced action. The invasion of the Hydra facility is really intense from start to finish. There isn’t much breathing room from one page to the next, but Pérez manages the pacing well enough that the issue never feels like a mess of explosive action. Jess maintains an overall sense of heroism next to the villain, even as the two of them are working together. The animosity between the two plays out in a sharply subtle contrast of facial features, postures, and action as hero and villain move from location to location.

Pacheco and Pérez’s last issue features a battle with a giant beast. They follow that in the eighth issue with a complex interaction between hero and villain that plays to subtlety without compromising action. Pacheco’s success with the series has been a product of knowing exactly how to modulate Jess through her world in a way that allows each chapter to build stylistically on the back of the one before it. Jess has come a long way in eight issues. It’s fun to see the progression, thanks to some very clever work by Pacheco and Pérez.

Grade: A