The Good
Last issue the villainous Daemos was trapped in a stasis prison while Miguel O’Hara had made an uneasy alliance with his rival Tyler Stone to use the Alchemax facility to dissect a previous clone body of Daemos and try to find any way to stop the Inheritor’s ravenous rampage. This issue...well things don’t exactly go according to plan. Not only is Daemos more willing than expected to free himself by any means necessary, but even the advanced technology of 2099 may not be enough to handle, or understand, him. Peter David does a good job of establishing not only the stakes, but the world that these characters move through with a great economy of pace. We very quickly understand how this world differs from ours, and not just in terms of technology. I’m hoping when this all shakes out that O’Hara (and, if I’m REALLY hopeful Lady Spider) remains in 2099 instead of returning to the already overcrowded modern New York of 616. We also get a great, semi-comedic interlude of a knock-down, drag-out fight between Daemos and an unexpected 2099 character.
Will Sliney’s linework, likewise, does a good job of snapping from place to place without becoming too difficult to follow. Despite being a fairly contained issue, there are quite a few locations and characters featured, and Sliney not only makes it easy to keep track of, but the characters look great as well. He gives a kind of smooth detail that evokes the feel of the time period, but also gives the characters a great deal of expressiveness. I have always been impressed with Antonio Fabela’s colors in this title and how they give the city a look of perpetual night artificially lit by cyberpunk neon, at once dark but bold and sharp as well.
The Bad
This issue in particular commits a cardinal sin of a tie-in title: pointlessness. It’s not a bad issue, but the entire crux of it doesn’t happen. We learn very little about the Daemos and even less about the Inheritors. And while the characters are well-written, nothing that happens in the book is significant, or substantial, enough to carry it forward without its ties to Spider-Verse, so it neither functions effectively as a standalone nor a tie-in.
The main thrust of the suspense in the issue is, likewise, predicated on a very, very out of character assumption, and that’s the idea that Daemos would, in any way, be afraid of pushing himself to death. In point of fact, O’Hara TELLS him that if he pushes too hard on his prison it will kill him, knowing full well about how the Inheritors operate through infinite clones, all of whom carry the memories of their previous incarnation right up until the moment of their death.
The Verdict
This issue feels like it was a filler issue where one was not called for.Knowing more about the inner-workings of the Inheritors, even if it didn’t manage to find a “silver bullet” solution to the problem, sounded like a great time for some character building (where better to bond than over an autopsy table?) as well as some mythos-building, finally learning SOMEthing concrete about the characters. Where we’re left by issue’s end, doesn’t feel like we’ll get that opportunity, at least not within this event. The art is still great, and I’m still loving the characters, especially that quick appearance by one in particular from this timeline, but regarding this issue isn’t a strong entry either in the series nor the Spider-Verse event itself.