All New X-Factor #16 Review (AXIS Tie-In)
Okay, we’re following up on the events of AXIS on the Serval Team in All-New X-Factor #16 and here’s my review!
The comic opens with the Sentinels attacking Serval fruitlessly in order to retrieve the nuclear football. Harrison entertains the thought of letting them into the barrier to prevent them from being affected by the Hate Plague but they’re on orders so it wouldn’t help. Lorna does point out that they will try to get in some way though, which is proven when they go and kidnap his wife.
Meanwhile Pietro is feeling bored watching with his daughter when Lorna comes up and asks him about what Wanda said about him spying on them. But asking I mean she slaps him hard enough to knock the speedster down and he points out they have bigger issues but explains why he quit the Avengers. She took more offense to that second-stringer line than the whole spying thing, but any further discussion is cut off when the Sentinel with Harrison wife gives him a minute to drop the shield before he crushes her, to which she tells the robot she’s screwed because he won’t do it.
He doesn’t as he can’t let them get the nuclear football so the team acts to bring the robots and/or the dome down. Doug gets it down before Pietro saves her but he gets hit and then Warlock gets taken out. Danger takes offense to this and turns their Sentinels onto one another until Longshot and Sunfire arrive as the comic ends.
Okay, review time.
Uh… we see some developments in regards to the team, like Danger going off when they hurt Warlock and Lorna confronting Pietro, but there’s something missing I feel. Maybe because they’re dragging it out longer than World War Hate.
Meh, a 4 out of 5.
Spider-Verse Team Up #1 Review
Keeping this short for the time, this is my review of Spider-Verse Team-Up #1.
The comic opens on Earth-94 where an optimistic Ben Reilly runs into Vultures from alternate dimensions and has to be bailed out by Old Man Spider and Spider-Ham. It’s clear he’s one of the naïve spiders because the time spent with him talking ends up with them getting hit with paralysis darts despite the fact they should have Spider-Sense and he alone managed to overpower it via sheer optimistic willpower. I call asspull but whatever. As they drag him to the safe haven for spiders both Spider-Ham and Old Man Spider can see that he has no clue what he’s in for, but considering how the other Bens have fared and how they’re being hunted he may as well die among friends.
In the second part we get Spider-Man Noir and Six-Armed Spider. Noir is…. Well, negative through and through, as he refers to the fact that the Aunt May and Uncle Ben being alive only because they are sticking with him by his bedside being the only good that Peter Parker has been done, but is willing to leave him behind since he’s helpless despite being a totem. Six-Armed Spider decides to go check on his blood work since he has an idea.
Eventually Peter morphs into a Man-Spider so Noir drags him onto the roof while Six-Arms gives him a cure he made before Noir goes for the mercy kill approach. He explains that he originally made it for himself but it didn’t work and gave him six arms, but since that Peter was younger his cells could revert back and cure him. That Peter loses his spider abilities but he has a family and a normal life that they could never have, which Noir calls a win in his books.
Okay review time.
I found the stories kind of bland, but the characterizations stuck out. We see Old Man Spider and Noir are both jaded from their experiences and are willing to make tougher calls than their partners, but both Spider-Ham and Six-Armed Spider are more…. optimistic before resorting to more permanent solutions.
I give it a 3 out of 5.
Amazing Spider-Man #9 (Spider-Verse)
Okay, a lot is going on in Amazing Spider-Man #9 and these are my thoughts on probably the biggest issue yet in the Spider-Verse event.
The comic opens with Peter Parker being called in for work by JJJ, which is the first clue it’s not our Peter. The second is that Morlun gets his hands on him and starts feasting on him while the third is that they live on the moon. We then cut to Morlun’s siblings and the gluttonous one deciding to see what he’s hoarding on the 616-universe.
After that Peter gets woken up by Silk who tells him the solution to their problem when it comes to wanting to make spider-babies is for him to leave since the great web is closing in on him or something cryptic like that. This is further compounded when Mayday, Spider-UK, Anya, Miguel, Jessica Drew (616), and Spider-Ham, show up and tell him the short version that Morlun’s brother it coming. Peter immediately says to get in the damn portal before he shows up.
Kaine is not so lucky as the glutton found him and attacked the New Warriors (they’ll probably make it). He tries to skewer him with his Other powers, but that just makes the glutton want him more until Gwen Stacy, Ben Rilley, and Bruce Banner show up with the Old Man Spider. They get Kaine out but Bruce gets his spine snapped and they have to leave him behind.
All the spiders meet up on Earth-13, a safe zone because the Spider-Man there still has the power of a god and the only reason he hasn’t gone after the Inheritors is because his power is tied to his dimension. Anyway, long story short they need Peter there because he’s supposedly the chosen one. The comic ends in the Ultimate Universe as Jessica Drew (1610) and Miles Morales come under fire by the glutton’s sister.
We then get an epilogue where the head of the Inheritors holds a feast on a number of Spiders, quells his children’s squabbling, and then reveals he knows all connected to the great web after enslaving the Master Weaver before they munch on the collected Spider-Men.
Okay, okay review time.
A lot going on, most of it I like. There are some glaring issues, like the text being wrong and you have to wonder why they would just call out their secret identities in public. But I do like the characterizations of a good number of the spiders and the story is moving.
I give it full marks, 5 out of 5.
Twilit Dreams Circle 