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 He explains that he originally made it for himself but it didn’t work and gave him six arms, but since that Peter was younger his cells could revert back and cure him.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.
Edge of Spider-Verse #1: Spider-Man Noir Review
Spider-Verse is coming and the first in the Edge of Spider-Verse series is out with Spider-Man Noir. Read my recap and review below.
Our story begins in New York 1939 in a movie theater where some people are reviewing footage caught of Spider-Man beating up some robbers and questioning whether or not there’s a place for a vigilante now that most of the mobsters have been taken out. One of the people, a woman, hopes to meet him soon for the blood of the spider-god runs through him, while Mysterio gets a diss by someone choosing to pay for a monkey over his show. Even in the past he couldn’t win…
Anyway, at the World’s Fair we have Peter, Aunt May, and Mary Jane browsing around. Apparently MJ went overseas for three years to record a war in Spain and changed, but not really relevant unless you’ve read the past series I’m assuming. They go to Mysterio’s show when Peter’s Spider-Sense starts acting up but nothing immediately comes of it, and the show ends with Peter realizing Mysterio’s a fake but saying nothing since it made MJ smile.
After the show Mysterio and his assistant go on about his plan to become a new Kingpin once they get Spider-Man’s blood when Fisk shows up telling him they got the last living member of Goblin’s gang. They do a recap about how Spider-Man got his powers before he asks about Felicia Hardy.
They go to see her, where Felicia is wearing a mask, and when she refuses to move it they kill her friend. It’s a gore-discretion shot so you can’t see, but her face has been disfigured by the last person who thought she could lead them to Spider-Man. Fisk notes that he can do nothing to her that hasn’t been done so she won’t talk, but Mysterio goes with the holding the former love interest hostage gambit.
He leaves a message in a newspaper for him to come and make a blood-sacrifice or she dies, and Peter goes along to save her while his Spider-Sense, which is new for him I guess, is blaring. At the show, where the audience thinks it’s just a show, he shows up and gets gassed, then put into a water closet death trap after having his blood taken.
Peter traps air in a web on his face to last ten minutes before breaking out of the chains and kicking Mysterio’s butt with one hit. The guy hunting Spider-Men pops up and then Otto does too and rescues him. As the comic ends Felicia steals the blood taken from Peter as he arrives to meet a few other Spider-Men in the year 2099.
Okay review time.
Spider-verse is shaping up to look decent. This is only the second time I’ve seen Spider-Man Noir, the first being the Shattered Dimensions game, so I don’t know much about him, but I’m eager to see his role in things. I can’t wait for this crossover to continue with Gwen Stacy next in line.
5 out of 5 folks.
Twilit Dreams Circle 