Brand New Day’s best Easter egg is a brutal comics throwback

As a lifelong Spider-Man reader, I’ve spent more than my share of time on comic book discussion boards. Sooner or later, someone on those forums always asks one of the traditional questions: If you had the chance, what characters would you bring back to life?

Since I was a kid, one of my big answers has always been the same: a supporting character named Jean DeWolff, who’s not quite as obscure as she ought to be.

Captain DeWolff has been dead for over 40 years in real time, but she has a peculiar staying power. Considering her relatively low number of comic appearances, Jean has an unusually long history of showing up in various alternate universes and transmedia adaptations. While she’s often redesigned in the process, you can spot Jean in the Spider-Man Noir comics, Spider-Gwen’s home universe in her solo comic, the video game adaptation of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, The Spectacular Spider-Man (2008), and Marvel’s Spider-Man (2017), among others.

This summer, Jean makes her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, played by Liza Colón-Zayas (The Bear), as Peter Parker’s friend on the NYPD. Her presence is an Easter egg for old-school comic book fans and a callback to a classic, brutal story arc from 1985.

A brief Marvel history of Captain Jean DeWolff

Jean DeWolff was originally created by Bill Mantlo and the late Sal Buscema in Marvel Team-Up #48 (1976), “A Fine Night for Dying!” She was a police captain in the NYPD who encountered both Spider-Man and Iron Man during her investigation into a series of bombings.

Jean subsequently appeared in later issues of Marvel Team-Up as Spidey’s unofficial police liaison, which led to her showing up in a few other Spider-Man books over the course of the next nine years. Jean was easy to spot, as she had an unexplained fondness for the cars and fashion of the 1930s — she often dressed like a gun moll and drove a classic 1932 Ford.

The death of Jean DeWolff

Source: Rich Buckler for Marvel Comics

Jean’s string of cameos and supporting appearances ended suddenly in 1985 in a four-part story in Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man v1 #107 through #111. “The Death of Jean DeWolff” was written by the late Peter David (The Incredible Hulk, Supergirl, Aquaman, and about a hundred Star Trek novels) in some of his earliest work for Marvel, with pencils by the late Rich Buckler (the co-creator of Deathlok).

The story began, as you might expect, with Jean being found dead. She was the first victim of a shotgun-wielding serial killer who called himself the Sin-Eater. Spider-Man and Daredevil eventually caught the Sin-Eater, but not without cost or consequence.

“The Death of Jean DeWolff” has since been collected in a trade paperback of the same name. It’s an underexposed example of what’s sometimes called the “grim and gritty” post-Watchmen era of comics, with both David and Buckler channeling the same kind of noir-influenced storytelling that Frank Miller had recently used in his landmark run on Daredevil.

Source: Rich Buckler for Marvel Comics

If you read the last couple of issues of Spectacular Spider-Man before “The Death of Jean DeWolff,” it’s a sharp thematic turn for the comic, which abruptly went from standard superhero action to a sort of all-ages crime drama. Spider-Man takes the role of a bitter sleuth on a personal crusade, against the backdrop of an ’80s New York City that’s threatening to tear itself apart at the seams. It’s Peter Parker as Mike Hammer, which works better than you’d think it would.

In the broader arc of Spider-Man’s history, “The Death of Jean DeWolff’s” single biggest impact might be that it ends with Peter and Matt Murdock finding out one another’s secret identities for the first time. In 2026, when half the other major characters in the Marvel Universe know who Spidey is behind the mask, that doesn’t sound like much, but that was a big deal in 1985 and influenced both characters’ stories for years afterward.

The rush to catch the Sin-Eater would make another big mark on the Marvel Universe. As later established in Amazing Spider-Man v1 #300, Eddie Brock risked his professional reputation as a journalist on a story in which he claimed to have learned the identity of the Sin-Eater. Unfortunately for Eddie, he’d only found a copycat. When Spider-Man caught the real Sin-Eater, Eddie was ruined, which sent him on the downward spiral that ended with him becoming Venom.

Jean DeWolff’s lasting Marvel influence

Image: Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment

Jean herself, as noted above, has never quite been forgotten. Despite her death (and very much being an early example of what Gail Simone would later call “fridging”), Jean seems to have built a cult following, particularly among later creators. As if to remind readers that she existed, some Spider-Man writer figures out a way to bring up Jean DeWolff every once in a while, so her subtle influence on this corner of the Marvel Universe has lingered for over 40 years. There was even a short-lived attempt to resurrect Jean, as she was one of multiple deceased supporting characters who was briefly brought back to life in the 2016 storyline Clone Conspiracy.

A modern example of Jean’s impact involves Yuri Watanabe, who was introduced to the Spider-Man comics in 2009 as an NYPD police captain. Readers eventually learned she was friendly to superheroes, and to Spider-Man in particular, because she’d been a friend of Jean DeWolff’s. Yuri went on to become a major part of Insomniac’s Spider-Man universe, both as a member of the supporting cast and in her costumed identity as the Wraith.

For now, though, that’s all there is to know about the surprisingly long backstory behind one of the supporting characters in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. You don’t miss anything by not knowing any of this, but if you enjoy hearing about the greater universe of Spider-Man lore, Jean DeWolff is an ’80s cult favorite.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is playing in theaters.