As everyone’s favorite Spider-Demon, Rek-Rap would say, it is web whanging time here at the Beat’s Marvel Rundown! This week we’ve got a double dose of spider-verse as we catch up with Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto’s Ultimate Spider-Man and continue our coverage of the gooey world of Spidey foe turned demigod in the Venom War. This time spotlighting Venom War: Daredevil, which sees the Man without Fear caught up in the messy fun thanks to Chris Condon and Lan Medina.
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Excelsior
Ultimate Spider-Man #9
Writer: Jonathan Hickman
Artist: Marco Checchetto
Colorist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: VC’s Cory Petit
Jonathan Hickman’s reinvention of the wall crawler has made for some consistently solid comics, especially when joined by the series’ original cocreator, artist Marco Checchetto. But if the title has had one major flaw it’s been the absence of Peter Parker and his personal motivations. What makes him want to be a hero? What drives him? Everything seems to be working out pretty well for this well adjusted Peter, older in years but younger in experience. The book has spent more time exploring the emotional life of Harry Osborn. Meanwhile, the larger intrigue surrounding the Kingpin’s involvement in a global shadow government has focused on J. Jonah Jameson and Ben Parker. Under Hickman’s pen, Peter is little more than an average guy swept up into a war he doesn’t know much about and has little personal stake in. Being Spider-Man is more dalliance, or midlife crisis, than mission.
Here in issue 9, targeted by one of the would-be assassins of Kingpin’s Ultimate Sinister Six, Spider-Man has to make his first life or death decision, which it puts him at odds with his new friend Harry Osborn. The tensions between power and responsibility finally feel like they are being explored for this older Peter and the weight of his decisions have become more real. No coincidence that Hickman waited until now to introduce the Spidey Sense—the anxieties of Peter’s life are beginning to weigh on him and cracks are forming for the first time.
Hickman’s script balances the Spider-Man/Green Goblin action with Jameson and Ben Parker finding success and profit at their new online newspaper off the back of sensational Spider-Man stories, which makes for some ironic moments as Jameson grouses over the lack of substance. These two are getting closer to the truth about Kingpin and view the Spidey circus as a distraction. But as Peter’s danger sense begins to go off, the readers can’t help but fear that larger dangers are in store.
The art here is gorgeous. Checchetto excels at every element of the form. The dialogue heavy scenes rely on subtle storytelling decisions like wardrobe, body language, and framing choices for the individual panels. The layouts feel breezy even when the text is heavy—in part thanks to the letters by VC’s Cory Petit and in part due to Checchetto’s dynamic staging and panel composition.
The action is tremendous in the climactic standoff with Ultimate Black Cat. Checchetto chooses to focus tightly on the individual figures despite the acrobatic prowess of the characters involved. The result is a fight that feels brutal and intensely personal and physical. Matthew Wilson’s colors shift subtly from warm hues of orange and yellow early on to more ominous cool blues and purples that cast the issue in a literal darkness.
The slow pace of the first 8 months of this title has left me a bit skeptical of where the book has been leading to, especially as it spends so much of its time on its supporting cast over Peter himself. It has left the series without a clear identity or mission statement. Though there are no earth shattering moments in issue 9, the quiet and almost mundane reality of the world crushing in on Peter has made the plan start to come into focus
Verdict: BUY
Rapid Rundown
- Venom War: Daredevil #1
- In this era of telling 1/6th of a story for the monthly market to trade-wait, done-in-ones are an archaic artform in superhero comics. So crafting a one-shot that ties into a crossover event and finishes a concise narrative, climax and all, in 30 pages? A challenge, at minimum. While known for That Texas Blood and The Enfield Gang Massacre, this is Chris Condon‘s first try in the Marvel Universe, which, at minimum, makes this an interesting trial run for how a western noir creator approaches a superhero title. Turns out that getting a Matt Murdock x Elektra Natchios story set in a single building during a zombiote siege is familiar horrible territory for a crime comic creator. The first couple pages are clearly Condon familiarizing himself with the differing Daredevils’ voices and setting up a narrative button to push on to accelerate scenes to a singular conclusion that approaches depth in a time when none will do just as well. Pairing a first-timer with an industry vet like Lan Medina is a no-brainer that works exceptionally well when Medina is doing career best work. Medina establishes the space of St. Nick’s Orphanage and Elektra’s clashes in as claustrophobic as a way possible, so that we can feel the night closing in on our Daredevils without them internalizing the thought. Though the panel layouts can feel stock standard in their scale towards one another, Medina has a penchant for using page-start and page-end panels to stage his best shot, which impacts page turns in an efficient and elegant manner. This also helps when Yen Nitro is wielding box blurs and diffused glows to separate foreground/background planes in nighttime NYC scenes that feature hundreds of zombiotes. Nitro loves to use that keylight glow to pop a page a little too often for my liking in other books, but with so much action taking place inside, this subdued approach brings a refined edge to his palette. VC’s Clayton Cowles got put through the ringer as Condon couldn’t help but add sfx to nearly every page [it’s a Daredevil book lol]! But given all that ground to run on a Marvel letterer’s timeline means Cowles has some hits and some misses when it comes to fitting the scene spatially, with color, or in visual tone. Case in point: the ending features sfx taking up a lot of real estate, and they aren’t as discordant nor fit the narrative tone, so it unfortunately flattens the climax. If your idea of Marvel comics fun is a single location done-in-one tower defense tale, be my guest. —Beau Q.
Wolverine Revenge #2
- There’s something to be said for simply unleashing a top-tier superhero artist on a bunch of characters that he hasn’t gotten to draw in a consequential story before, or even in a long while. That’s certainly what this new Wolverine Revenge miniseries seems to be doing with Greg Capullo, who is inked here by Tim Townsend, colored by FCO Plascencia, and lettered by Cory Petit. This issue gives us a classic rowdydow between ol’ Logan and Sabretooth, as well as things like Magneto’s skeleton and Wolverine using Magneto’s helmet to shield his mind from manipulation. In other words, the second issue here is chocked right full of the good Marvel &#^@. But this is also a series scripted by Jonathan Hickman, who is probably incapable of not layering his action comics with big complex ideas, and so we get hints of some of those here, particularly in the discussion about whether people and countries can change, which hammers home its big line with a giant splash of a bunch of American flag-draped coffins. I was salty in the first issue when the dinosaur island setup went away so quickly, but this book is good and interesting, and I’ve gotten over it. I recommend this one. —Zack Quaintance
