SPIDER-WOMAN

Jessica Drew's spider-derived physiology does something Peter Parker's never could: her body constantly produces pheromones, chemical signals that steer the emotions of everyone near her. In the classic telling, men who come close feel an involuntary pull of attraction and goodwill toward her, while women feel an equally involuntary surge of distrust, fear, or outright hostility. She does not switch the effect on. It simply radiates from her skin, which makes ordinary life — a shop counter, a crowded train, a first date — a minefield she never asked to walk through.

The cruelty of the power is that it poisons both directions at once. Jessica can never be sure a man's kindness is really his, and she starts every friendship with a woman already fighting a headwind she cannot see. Early stories lean hard into that isolation: a stranger's attraction, triggered by her chemistry, ends in tragedy when her uncontrolled bio-electric venom blast answers it. The girl who survived Wundagore grew into a detective who trusts evidence precisely because she cannot trust reactions — including reactions to herself.

Eventually she fights back with chemistry of her own. Jessica uses a specially made neutralising spray — a kind of anti-perfume — to damp her pheromones down before she works a case or walks into a room she needs to read honestly. Later writers gave her finer control, letting her push the effect toward fear or calm on purpose, but the spray remains the perfect symbol of the character: a heroine whose most intimate superpower is one she has to perfume away just to be treated like a person.