 |
| THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN No. 13, March 2015 |
As multi-issue comic book events go, Dan Slott’s
“Spider-Verse” clearly has a number of factors in its favour. To begin with it
not only features the most popular “Marvel Worldwide” super-hero ever but also
contains many fan favourite alternative versions of the self-same wall-crawler
as well. Whether they be drawn from the larger literary Spider-Man family such as Ben
Reilly, Spider-Woman and Peter Porker or other entertainment mediums such as
the 1967 animated cartoon Spidey or Takuya Yamashiro from Earth-51778.
There’s
also a genuine sense of threat and menace to these characters, as the
Inheritors repeatedly demonstrate to the reader that they are both formidable
and lethal foes. Then finally there’s the sheer scale of the conflict… a long
drawn-out battle which has spread not just across time and space but spans
different universes as well. Indeed it is easy to see why “The Amazing
Spider-Man” sold in excess of 100,000 copies per issue during this story-arc.
But “Spider-Men: No More” is disappointingly a good example of where the
American writer has got his priorities mixed up, of where he has allowed the
opportunity to sell more editions of other titles blind him to which plot
threads are central to the main storyline, and where scenes laden with heavy
over-bearing dialogue have been favoured instead of pages depicting action and
major occurrences within the “Spider-Verse”. What this means is that rather
than tell the exciting story of the destruction of Jennix’s cloning facility on
Earth-802 or Spider-Woman’s espionage mission on Earth-001, this major Marvel
event’s ‘supposedly’ leading comic book title instead attempts to ‘captivate’
its audience through having them read endless discourses as Uncle Ben from
Earth-3145 drones on about how he turned his back upon ‘great
responsibility’, and cowered within a nuclear-proof atomic bunker.
Possibly even more irritating however is
Slott’s treatment of Silk’s character as she becomes increasingly annoying,
accident-prone and dim-witted. Having already broken one teleportation
bracelet, Cindy Moon decides her best course of action is to travel to the
Great Hunters’ home, the one place the ‘Bride’ should never go, and once there
immediately use her replacement bangle to deflect a sword blow. Not only is
this utterly stupid but also an extremely lazy way for Slott to manufacture a
reason as to why the three vital ‘spider-totems’ all assemble together on
Loomworld.
Even when some action does occur, the man behind “Arkham Asylum:
Living Hell” somehow conjures up an incredibly unlikely victory for the Scarlet
Spider, as Kaine easily disposes of the ‘unbeatable’ Inheritor Solus before
meeting his own demise whilst in his ‘Other’ form. Quite how someone who
previously has simply sucked the life-essence from Cosmic Spider-Man can so
swiftly be killed having been speared by a few spikes is baffling, and
completely contrary to the super-strong villain Slott has previously offered
readers.
Unfortunately so many sedentary scenes also bodes somewhat ill for Giuseppe
Camuncoli to show off his artistic talents. Whilst the Italian’s pencilling is
competent enough, and well-coloured by Justin Ponsor, the vast majority of
panels are concerned solely with various characters talking. As such there is
disappointingly scant opportunity for the cartoonist to demonstrate his quite
considerable action-orientated drawing skills; and when these are briefly
called upon his illustrations appear unhappily ‘out of sorts’.
 |
| The variant cover art of "THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN" No. 13 by Gabriele Dell'Otto |
No comments:
Post a Comment