Essential Spider-Woman, Volume 2 contains Spider-Woman nos. 26-50, Marvel Team-Up no. 97, and Uncanny X-Men no. 148. Picking up from volume 1, Spider-Woman continues to work as a bounty hunter in Los Angeles. In his final stories, Michael Fleisher pits Jessica Drew against English businessman and media mogul, Rupert M. Dockery (an obvious parody of Rupert Murdock), who sponsors supervillains in order to scoop other papers in covering their battles with Spider-Woman. This new media attention leads to conflict between Spider-Woman and her bounty-hunting partner, Scott McDowell.
After Chris Claremont took over writing duties from Fleisher with issue 34, Jessica Drew and her friend Lindsay McCabe relocate to San Francisco, where Drew becomes a private investigator and continues to battle as Spider-Woman. With the exception of two alien stories, Claremont's stories have greater depth than the villain-of-the month formula that Fleisher used and feel like a return to Marv Wolfman's style. Given the opportunity to flesh out Claremont's stories, Steve Leialoha's art shines. Claremont builds a world involving a corrupt defense contractor and the Yakuza while bringing back the Arthurian elements of Wolfman's run, like Morgan LeFey. A multi-issue storyline involving the Viper is equally compelling. After wrapping up his main plots, Claremont's final two issues feel like afterthoughts, but do set the reader up for the disappointment of the final issues.
Ann Nocenti writes and Brian Postman illustrates issues 47-50. The first three are villain-of-the-month type stories while the final one attempts to tie them together and offer a conclusion for the series in a double-sized story. Nocenti's conclusion leaves a great deal wanting and feels like something of a betrayal after so many good stories. Postman's art is sufficient for the story, but lacks the zeal of Leialoha or Infantino. Worse, the ending wouldn't be fully resolved until Avengers nos. 240-241 and the events of New Avengers and Secret Invasion. The next stand-alone Spider-Woman series was a 4-issue mini about Julia Carpenter that Marvel published a decade after Spider-Woman no. 50. This was followed five years later by an 18-issue ongoing series starring Mattie Franklin in the title role. Jessica Drew wouldn't helm her own Spider-Woman series until the 7-issue Agent of S.W.O.R.D. motion comic in 2009-2010 and an on-going series beginning in 2015. All told, a disappointing ending.
This paperback volume reprints the stories in their original size with finished inks, but no color. The coloring in this era of comics took into account the cheap paper used and, without significant retouching, it would look garish. By omitting the colors and using cheaper paper, Marvel also made it possible to include more stories for a cheaper price, though the quality seems diminished from volume 1 and the black ink tends to leave smudges on the reader's fingers. If you want to read some of these in color without buying individual issues, nos. 37-38 appeared in Giant Size Spider-Woman and no. 45 was in an Impossible Man TPB. ( )