Oh dear.
Isn't it amazing how one thing can ruin what might otherwise be a great story? I mean, you could love everything else, but one thing happens that is so glaringly, annoyingly bad, that it casts a shadow over the whole thing? Well, welcome to Spirder-Men II.
Let's leave aside the fact that there are nearly as many Spider-people as there are X-Men these days, and they all have their own book. Let's leave aside the many versions of Peter Parker that the reader has to keep track of at the same time (previously, Marvel has simultaneously released 3 different comics where he is a corporate CEO, a high-school senior, and a married father-of-one). But let's not leave aside the problem with this book, because it's a recurring problem that needs to be talked about, because it's lazy writing and we shouldn't see it from a publisher of Marvel's standing.
This comic starts out great. First of all it drops us straight into the action, which is a refreshing change, and lulls you into a false sense of security that this book isn't going to treat you like a complete idiot. But you only get as far as the second page, and THIS happens:
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| In the immortal words of Cheech and Chong: "Hey, what was that shit, man?!" |
This is happening more and more: don't have the powers for this situation? Just grow some more and everything is fine. It's one of the main complaints against the unreadably bad America, and here we see it again; it's lazy, unimaginative storytelling that never sees the hero surmount any real difficulty. Good stories consist of conflict and adversity, and if that's something you struggle with, you might want to reconsider writing fiction. How Brian Michael Bendis can turn out the excellent Defenders #3 and then give us this nonsense in the same week truly escapes me.
The rest of the book is OK, by-the-numbers stuff, the art is alright if a little hurried, I struggled to care about the rest of the comic as page 2 just left me annoyed. I'm a huge Marvel addict and there are only a very select few titles I don't bother with, but if issue #2 pulls anything like this, Spider-Men II will be joining my very select list of dropped titles.
1 / 5
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