Spider-Woman #49
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeSpider-Woman #49 carries lasting significance as the first appearance of Mickey Silk — the telekinetic mutant teenager who comes to be called Poltergeist — a character who would continue to appear across multiple Marvel titles including the Beauty and the Beast limited series. The issue also functions as the penultimate chapter of Jessica Drew's original 50-issue run, one of Marvel's longest-running solo series headlined by a female character of the Bronze Age; as such, it is a key brick in the arc that builds toward the series' remarkable, era-defining conclusion. The issue is also notable for introducing the foster-family Silk and for advancing the Locksmith/Tick-Tock abduction subplot that gives the finale its structural backbone, showing Nocenti and Gruenwald deliberately engineering a serialized lead-in rather than simply running out the clock.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
By the time issue #49 went on sale (cover-dated April 1983, shipped December 28, 1982), editor Mark Gruenwald had already been informed that dwindling sales meant the series would end with issue #50. Gruenwald deliberately hired relative newcomers Ann Nocenti as writer and Brian Postman as penciler for the final four issues, reasoning that fresh, unencumbered perspectives might give the series an unconventional send-off; the two were paired with inker Sam De La Rosa and colorist Christie Scheele under Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter. According to an account Nocenti later shared, Gruenwald approached her specifically because no established writer wanted to write the cancellation issues, and the new characters introduced in this final run — including Poltergeist — were largely Gruenwald's own concepts handed to Nocenti to execute.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Mickey Silk, the mutant teenager with uncontrollable psychokinetic abilities who is nicknamed 'Poltergeist' by Spider-Woman and Tigra in this very issue.
- First appearance of foster parents Henry Silk and Samantha Silk, who hire Jessica Drew as a private investigator to locate their missing foster son.
- Written by Ann Nocenti (pencils by Brian Postman, inks by Sam De La Rosa, colors by Christie Scheele, letters by Rick Parker) — the same creative team that closed out the entire series through issue #50.
- Edited by Mark Gruenwald under Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter; Gruenwald assembled this final creative team after the series was confirmed for cancellation due to declining sales.
- The story is titled 'Runaway!' and advances the overarching Locksmith/Tick-Tock subplot: Werewolf by Night (Jack Russell) vanishes mysteriously in the opening pages, and both Tigra and Poltergeist disappear by the issue's end, setting up the mass-imprisonment premise resolved in issue #50.
- Jessica Drew reveals her Spider-Woman identity to her boyfriend David Ishima within this issue, a significant character-relationship development in the series' closing chapters.
- The issue was reprinted in Essential Spider-Woman Vol. 2 (2007) and again as part of Marvel Masterworks: Spider-Woman Vol. 4 (2024 hardcover, collecting issues #39–50).
- An abridged version of the issue (minus two pages) was also published in the French anthology Nova #77 (Editions Lug, June 1984), reflecting the series' international reach.
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Reprints
Reprinted in Nova #77 (1984), Marvel Masterworks: Spider-Woman #4 (2024), Essential Spider-Woman #2
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