Well, that figures.  Wolverine was originally intended to be one of the High Evolutionary's creations too.  Remember when he didn't read like a mutant in X-men 98 or 99?  But they dropped that one pretty quick.

WO

To be fair, Brian, they did away with Jessica Drew being a New Man created from a spider by her second appearance in MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE. By the time of her own book it's told that Jessica (as a child), her father, mother and another scientist moved to Wundagore Mountain to combine experimentation on spiders and genetic accelerators because of the rich deposits of uranium found there..  Unfortunately, Jessica eventually becomes poisoned by the uranium-rich mountain and her father has to give her an experimental "spider extract" in order for her to survive.  She doesn't immediately recover, needing treatments from the genetic accelerator for years.  Her mother dies and her father mysteriously vanishes, leaving the remaining scientist to administer the therapy.  The remaining scientist will become the High Evolutionary. 

All told in SPIDER-WOMAN 1 doing away with her being an actual spider really early on.

Brian Miller wrote: She's now a gal that was genetically altered by her dad, I think, in the womb.

Accidentally altered in the womb, so it makes it much different than the Hulk movie origin where there Bruce's father always intended to muck with his child.  Jessica's mother is in the process of showing off their experiments and laboratory to their benefactor when the accelerator goes off by accident.  After she's born, she's fine...for a while.  When she starts showing signs of being genetically altered, her father experiments on her to find a cure.  He ends up taking it too far and, eventually, Hydra steps in.  Unknown to the Drew's, their benefactor was a Hydra operative. Hydra was a part of her origin from page one, day one.  A few changes, but nothing out-of-line for me.

Ah, that's right.

Thanks for the synopsis, too. I haven't gotten to my ESSENTIAL SPIDER-WOMAN yet.

Oh Matt, Matt, Matt....What will I do with you.  I was writing in the persona of Prue Giroux, a reporter in Vogue, in the Marvel universe.  The general public would not know there was a Julia Carpenter and a Jessica Drew.  My 1st issue was Spiderwoman 2 or 3, with the needle?, and I loved the original SWars.  Sorry, I was writing as if I were a member of MUniverse reporter.....wasn't my acting convincing(sob!)

In the Marvel Universe par example, they would never have known there was a Ben Reilly spidey and a Peter, just a Spidey, ala James Rhodes and Tony. Sorry for confusion. Must have been having a Jeanne marie personality crisis.

And no, I don't cross dress...just felt a female was a better fashion correspondent! 

 J. Michael Straczynski on alterations to Spider-Man's origin:

"I've never had a problem with Spidey's origin. My job, in coming into the book, was to try and look at things in new ways without actually changing anything or disrespecting the work of those who came before me. The question I asked was...was Peter destined to be bitten by the spider? Was it an accident or was it fate?

Is that a mystical element, or a philosophical one? It's not like I introduced some wacky idea that nobody's ever heard of before. Notions of predestination and fate are as much a part of our culture as the air we breathe. I sometimes see people complaining about "all this mystical crap", but that's really a misnomer, and I don't see that radical a contradiction. In one of the last Ezekiel stories, the shaman Peter meets says, "You can tell me all the reasons WHY the sun rises in the morning, all the laws of thermodynamics and celestial rotation...and I can tell you that the sun rises in the morning because it is DESTINED to rise in the morning.” Is that really such a contradiction?" I didn't think so then, and I don't think so now.

The notion of the spider as part of his consciousness is also not that far a reach given that he has all these other attributes...it's as though some people said, "Okay, he can take 18% of what a spider is but 20% is completely out of line." Why? Why not 20%? Or 25% as long as it stems from and is consistent with what happened in the first place. And the totemistic aspects of the story are elements that Peter has never really bought into. He sees them as metaphor, and an interesting aspect of all this, but he's never, ever signed off on them as being the end-all answer. Nor have I.

So no, I've never had a problem with the origin, it's one of the classic origins of all time, and I have no desire to muck about with it. I might tilt the mirror a little, to get some different ways of looking at it, but change it? No. Never. "

 Link to article here  http://www.newsarama.com/marvelnew/Spider-Man/amazing/Stracz ynski.htm

 I can see where he's coming from but what's been put out lately doesn't really seem like a real Spider-Man story. I've enjoyed his Babylon 5 and other works but his comic work hasn't wowed me. I know this costume won't last long and we'll be back to the classic suit. It just seems that the road along the way is going to be pretty bumpy in the mean time.

Why do writers like J. Michael Straczynski think they should mess with the past of iconic heroes, at all? I mean, if it's not broken, why try to fix it? If they want to leave their stamp on a character, can't they do it without messing with past stories by other writers? Why can't they just deal with the present and future of a character, and make new, exciting stories that don't screw with the established history?

The fact that JMS thinks he can pretend that all the "mystical crap" he's infused into AMS over the last few years isn't really mystical, it's philosophical, makes it really hard to take him seriously.

Mike