THE BASICS
Round two of Spider-Man's Noir adventures. With Goblin out of the picture, new blood is stepping up to take over as the big man on campus in New York's criminal underground.
MY COMPLIMENTS TO THE CHEF
- It's always nice to see characters we're familiar with re-imagined every once in a while and Spidey has a huge cast of them to pull from. We get to see a lot of familiar faces new to the series that weren't present the first time around. There's already plenty of villains and we see a couple of supporting cast members join in the fray.
- The art here is a big improvement over the last series. Previously, everything blended in together and it made discerning what was going on hard to do. Especially in the action scenes. Here though, a few more colors have been added into the general color scheme and it makes for a much nicer view.
- A couple of potentially great stories are set up here. At least, it looks like a couple stories. For all I know at this point, the two stories, one involving The Crime Master and the other involving Otto Octavious, could eventually end up being one in the same. As of right now though, they appear to be separate entities and the potential to have them intermingle with each other to give Spidey a bad day is exciting.
FEEL THE STING OF MY DISCONTENT!
- Spider-Man has one of the best rogue galleries in comics. Only Batman's comes close to equaling his, in my humble opinion. You've got all kinds of characters in there: psychopaths, goof balls, monsters, machines, scientists, brutes, you name it. With such a huge pool of potential villainy, would you go to the Crime Master as the big bad? I wouldn't. Yes, I understand that he's pretty much a noir character in the regular Marvel-verse, so he's a natural fit, but doesn't that take the fun out of it? I would have much rather seen an unexpected villain re-imagined as the series' big bad.
- There's a potential for villain overload here. In the series' first issue, we've already got as many villains as the first volume did by the end of its run. I like the chance to see these characters in a new light, sure, but I'm really hoping they don't over do it. I'd rather have a small cast with a focused story than a huge cast with a jumbled one, regardless of how cool the characters are.
WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE
This book focused a lot on promises and potential and little on execution, which is fine for a first issue, but now the comic needs to focus on delivery.
