Ultimate Spider-Woman: Change With the Light

Chapter 83: Humanitarian Purposes

Gwen Stacy was enjoying herself immensely. Eating Thanksgiving dinner with her family, she was especially thankful for how well almost everything seemed to be going in her life at the moment.

Her mother Helen, her cousin Jill and her Aunt Nancy were all happy and healthy, her acting and modeling work were picking up with new job offers from Jonathan Caesar and Desiree Vaughn-Pope, she was caught up on her homework at Empire State University, she was getting a lot of positive feedback from her social media efforts, and all of the many supervillains she'd fought in her superhero identity as the spectacular Spider-Woman were either in jail or otherwise no longer a threat.

It had been a long time since she'd been able to relax like this, surrounded by her family. To make things even better, her grandfather Stanley Lieber had been able to make it out for Thanksgiving, bringing with him his affable manner and loving warmth. The past year had been a very difficult one for Gwen, trying to balance the needs of her family and friends with her grades, her career and her responsibilities as a superheroine, and she was glad to finally have some time to unwind.

There was one large problem, though, one that still gave her a headache whenever she thought about it.

She was having problems with her boyfriend Randy Robertson, in large part due to the fact that his parents hated her. The insults hurt-a lot-but she wasn't comfortable talking about them to Randy. Gwen knew they were just looking out for him, and the last thing she wanted was to make him angry at his parents. As a result, she'd begged off joining him for his own family's Thanksgiving meal, saying that it should be a family-only event.

Unfortunately, Gwen had always been a bad liar, and Randy had pretty much figured it out for himself.

Now, neither of them was seeing each other for Thanksgiving at all-Randy hadn't been able to come to dinner because his family was going to some Harlem celebration that evening-and Gwen had ended up making him angry at his parents anyway.

Gwen managed to avoid thinking about it for most of the day, and she'd had a wonderful time.

Unfortunately, everything came back as she was getting ready for bed, and the tears flowed for several seconds before she managed to stop herself.

SPIDER-WOMAN  #83

"HUMANITARIAN PURPOSES"

"See, that's the thing," Randy explained to his cousin as they sat back down with their second helpings. "Jaleel White and Will Smith might have been playing characters that network TV viewers would be comfortable with, but that doesn't mean they didn't have important things to say."

"You really sure about that?" Jonas asked, after he'd swallowed a mouthful of turkey. "Doesn't it just entrench the problems that are already there? I mean, what's Middle America supposed to take away from that?"

"There's more than one way to challenge people," Randy smiled. "Groups like Public Enemy have their part to play, I'm not disputing that. When Carlton and Will get stopped by the police on Fresh Prince, or Laura gets ethnic slurs sprayed on her locker on Family Matters, a lot of people who are watching might not be expecting something like that. You catch them by surprise, force them to think about something that they weren't expecting. Sort of like the way jazz performers like Cab Calloway were rotoscoped into older cartoons, exposing a lot of people to their music in ways they wouldn't have expected."

Jonas frowned, not entirely convinced, before taking another bite of turkey. He thought Randy was too optimistic, but he let it go at that-they'd had these discussions several times already, and it was starting to get repetitive for both of them.

"Suit yourself," Jonas shrugged after he'd swallowed. "They still treating you right at HABQ-FM?" he asked, referring to the radio station where Randy was employed.