Marvel superheroine Julia Carpenter was the second Spider-Woman, and later she was the second Arachne and then the second Madame Web. A creation of Jim Shooter and Mike Zeck, she had a cameo in Secret Wars Vol. 1 #6, followed by her first full appearance a month later in Secret Wars #7.
Her superpowered journey began when she was manipulated into an experiment. A secret government group called The Commission decided to create a superhero. Val Cooper, who was working for the group, invited his friend Julia to participate in an athletic study, while really making her the test subject for an experiment in which she was injected with a mix of spider venom and exotic plant extracts. Julia gained powers similar to Spider-Man, including superstrength, speed, durability, stamina, agility, accelerated healing, the ability to wall-crawl and create webs from psychokinetic energy.
Soon Julia took on the mantle of Spider-Woman and was pulled into the first Secret Wars. She became allies with Spider-Man and the Avengers, fighting Doctor Doom, Hulk, and the Absorbing Man.
Once she returned to Earth, Julia joined Freedom Force, a team sponsored by the government that was mostly composed of former members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. She quickly noticed that her teammates still used brutal methods from their past criminal lives on missions, making her weary of being on the team. When they were sent to arrest the Avengers, and succeeded, Julia decided to ally with the superhero team and broke the Avengers out, becoming a fugitive in the process.
Attempting to fly under the radar, and still do some good, she teamed with Spider-Man and Iron Man on a few missions, including helping Iron Man against renegade AIM agents. Tony Stark intervened with the government on her behalf and she was pardoned for her crime.
She traveled to California on an assignment and aided the West Coast Avengers against the Pacific Overlords and U.S. Agent. After the fight, she was asked to join the team, where she went on to fight villains like Doctor Demonicus and Mephisto, as well as being a part of the Infinity War event. When the West Coast Avengers disbanded, she joined the spinoff team, Force Works, against enemies like the Mandarin and the Kree.
As a solo act, Julia often came up against the Death Web team, which was a team created by the Commission using a variation of the formula that turned her into Spider-Woman. The founder of Death Web kidnapped her daughter, Rachel, to blackmail her into fighting Spider-Man. She did, but when she bested Spider-Man, she refused to kill him, and when Spidey learned what was happening, he helped rescue her daughter. Julia decided to leave the superhero business to protect her daughter, but was attacked by Charlotte Witter and her power was stolen.
Though it seemed that Julia was out of the superhero game, she would return in Civil War and in other later storylines like Spider-Island.
