By: Dan Slott (writer), Humberto Ramos (pencils), Carlos Cuevas (inks), Edgar Delgado (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Ellie Pyle (assistant editor) & Stephen Wacker (editor)
The Story: Spider-Island is in full swing, Will they find a cure for the infected folks? Will Peter reveal his secret identity? And who is the Big Bad who’s been working with Jackal?
What’s Good: Humberto Ramos is great. He is such a good fit for a Spider-Man story because his art has so much bounce to it. His characters have TONS of energy and in just about every panel, the characters are doing something. It’s pretty rare to see a Ramos panel with a bunch of folks sitting still….even when they show a couple of people working on a computer, they are poised over the keyboard, ready to type furiously. And, he’s a master of layouts. He’s all over the place: grids, full bleeds, broken panel borders, no panel borders, backgrounds, no backgrounds… You can tell he’s both considering how to draw the action and how best to present that action so that the issue is maximally interesting.
And, Dan Slott is doing all kinds of fun stuff with the story too, especially his work with the Peter/Carlie relationship. It’s natural to anticipate what’s next in comics and the future for their relationship has been in constant flux during this event due to what choices Peter is making about sharing his secret identity. It is turning into a very fun cat-and-mouse story that is actually a little more entertaining than the Spider-Island story. Hopefully, Slott keeps Peter with Carlie instead of sending him back to that trampy MJ. And….how could Carlie not know that is Peter in the mask? I mean, they’ve been intimate with each other, how would she not recognize him?
As for the “main story”, it continues to develop nicely and be well paced. Each issue the threat becomes a little greater and the causes of the danger become a little more evident. This is much preferred to flinging the whole story out there in the first issue and then having boring crap in the middle.
What’s Not Quite As Good: There’s really not much to complain about. Narrow-minded fanboys who only want to see a Ditko-esque Spider-Man might object to Ramos’ style, but I love it. Likewise, there is a contingent of folks who want Spider-Man to get gritty like Daredevil and they might not like the comic element of this story.
My only substantial criticism is the Jonah Jameson is a tad over-the-top to where he is almost a self-parody, but this isn’t a major flaw.
Conclusion: Another great issue. I wish all events had this blend of energetic art and cool story.
Grade: A-
– Dean Stell
[This event also shows the importance of ensuring the quality of the main event. I’m loving the main Spider-Island event and that makes the tie-in miniseries seem just a little higher quality by association; I want MORE. By contrast, Fear Itself seemed more concerned with laying out 90 tie-in issues before worrying about whether the story was robust enough to merit that level of investment. Once Fear Itself-proper sputtered, all the tie-ins suffered as well and now Marvel’s major summer event can’t end quickly enough.]
Grade
Conclusion