What If Jane Foster Became Spider-Woman?

My apologies for not getting this up while it was still actually Wednesday (for me, anyway). I didn't get home until 9PM, had to eat...and then my cat who had not seen me all day climbed up on me and slept on me for three hours. She then took a brief intermission where I was able to finish this, and now she's back on me again. 

My legs have lost all circulation.

Anyway, enjoy this bonus caption! Another free Stable Diffusion one, I have worked up the financial nerve to get a Midjourney yet. There were several other Spider-Janes (Cosmic Web?) that had cool costumes, but this Jane had the least cursed face. Again there's just something about the concept of a Multiverse (in this case, Spider-Verse) and Jane's story that continually inspires me There's so many other ways that she could beat her cancer in the MCU and so many other hero variants she could become. It's just fun to do and what she deserves following Love and Thunder (seriously give me a Mighty Thor movie, she and Christian Bale were the only good things to come out of that trainwreck).

Also go see Across The Spider-Verse. It is as near to an absolutely perfect movie that I can ever remember seeing, and pretty much the perfect sequel.

Comic up on Friday, hopefully at 8AM but if not, expect it in the afternoon/evening!

TEXT

Cancer. Jane couldn't believe it. She had lived through SO MUCH weird and literally out of this world adventures (and for five years, had been legally, well, dead) and now she was looking down the barrel at cancer. She had saved an (extremely handsome) alien prince, she had been infected with the Aether (which had turned out to be the Reality Stone) and had been on the run from the Dark Elves and vaporized out of existence for five years and now...just this. Stage 4, treatment was likely going to be ineffective, only a few months to live even with the chemotherapy. This was what was going to kill Jane Foster, the still rather young and definitely brilliant astrophysicist and amatuer adventurer. It was entirely unfair. But Jane hadn't taken the news laying down. She had explored her options with currently medical technology, and nothing could be done. And with Asgard having been blown apart by the lord of all Fire Giants and the remainder now having settled on Earth without most of their technology...Chemotherapy was the best she could hope for. Jane had even looked into even more radical treatments, such as potentially getting Bruce Banner to give her a jolt of the same Gamma energy that had turned him into the Hulk...But Banner had refused to answer her calls. But the solution had come from Darcy, of all people (and Jane had to remind herself that it had been five years and Darcy was now her peer with a doctorate, not just an intern)!

"Well, if you're not going to play the Space Viking card then why don't you just, I dunno, science up your own way of fixing your bod?" Darcy had said through a mouthful of flaming hot Cheetos, "We're, like, some of the smartest people on the planet so maybe we can think of something? We are doctors after all!"

"Darcy, both of our doctorates are in astrophysics, not medicine!" Jane had sighed in frustration.

"Well, yeah, but we both have mess with a TON of sci fi sciency crap! You know I found a ton of cosmic microwave background radiation right here on Earth when NO ONE knew what they were looking at, and TUNED IN to it using a really old TV?" Darcy said, swallowing her snack, "Not to mention all those tripod things we used with those doll-faced guys attacked Liverpool!"

"London. Greenwich specifically" Jane corrected.

"Well they all spoke British right? Same place! Point is, maybe we can put something together and USE that CMBR to help you! If it can do crazy magical TV mind-wipe stuff and give people superpowers, it can beat cancer, right!"

Jane could not really fault her friend's logic, which again surprised her. So much had changed in five years where to Jane it had been a blink of an eye. But as her chemotherapy session ended, the two brilliant women returned to Jane's lab and in short order began to probe heavily into how to use CMBR, combined with the knowledge of Asgard that Jane knew of and understood...With a little bit of what Darcy was calling 'funky science' (because mad was outdated and stereotypical) thrown in. They weren't true engineers and Jane was growing weaker every day but they were getting close to something groundbreaking! Getting the CMBR collected wasn't hard, but the problem was that without a vector like Wanda Maximoff's magic, well, there was just no way of making it affect her cells much like had done for Monica Rambeau. Of course, neither scientist was expecting the vactor to come from something as harmless as a spider bite, of all things. It had just been another routine test of the equipment to attract, capture and store the CMBR, but during the test a otherwise harmless looking spider had dropped down from the lab's ceiling, through the emitters that were pulsing the CMBR into it's collection field...And then eventually crawl up Jane's pant leg and bite her sickly skin! The bite itself barely registered to Jane, and a shake and pat down of her pants crushed the poor spider, and after another disappointing test she and Darcy had taken off for the night. 

And that was when the changes began. Jane was never a deep sleeper, her mind was constantly turning, but perhaps it was her body running out of strength, perhaps it was the disappointments piling up and her time running out, but Jane barely made it to her bedroom before collapsing into unconsciousness. The night wheeled by and while she slumbered, her body changed, grew and ultimately, healed! Her skinny body grew larger as her tissues regenerated, her muscles growing larger than they ever had been before yet without ruining Jane's small frame. Her hair, long gone from the chemotherapy, returned in all of it's glory and her senses improved eight-fold. And her body continued to change as she would find out the next day. When Jane awoke, she felt FANTASTIC. Her eyes shot open and she screamed in shock and excitement at how healthy her body looked! How STRONG she felt! And a near miss by a pick-up truck running a red light proved that she could now LEAP far greater than any human should! Or the fact that she had...felt? the truck coming right before her miraculous leap. A trip to the lab (and later hospital as Darcy insisted) proved that Jane's DNA had been infused with CMBR...and that of a spider's! They'd later discover the crushed corpse of the arachnid in the lab, but until then Jane was eager to put her body to good use! And by that she was totally trying to be a hero just like Thor! She'd even stopped some bank robbers! Jane had even begun to obsess over the mysterious hero that was keeping New York City safe from crime. All that was missing was a costume...

"Ugh, we are TOTALLY getting sued for this..." Darcy grumbled as Jane stepped out of the lab's dressing room, decked out in a blue and red suit that looked entirely TOO similar to the webslinger in New York.

"Well it's just a starter costume! I can change it later if we really do this! So what do you think? I was thinking of calling myself...the Cosmic Web!" Jane beamed as she modelled...Really just for herself in the mirror, completely missing Darcy's face palm. This was great!

"Listen, just because you now have some great powers doesn't mean you have great fashionability!" Darcy grumbled.