By: Dan Slott (writer), Humberto Ramos (pencils), Victor Olazaba & Karl Kesel (inks), Edgar Delgado (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Ellie Pyle (assistant editor) & Stephen Wacker (editor)
The Story: The finale of Spider-Island. How are the heroes going to stop the Queen and save all civilians who have turned into big, nasty spiders?
Five Things:
1. What a great way to do an event! It’s hard not to compare Spider-Island to that other Marvel event that ended last week. For one thing, this was actually an ending. It isn’t being followed by three .1 issues and a 12 issue weekly miniseries like that other event. When this issue ends, the villain is beaten and things are mostly back to normal. Another wonderful thing about Spider-Island is that it look place largely within the pages of the ongoing series. Sure, there were some tie-ins, but it isn’t as if there was a separate Spider-Island miniseries that ran side-by-side with Amazing Spider-Man. Finally, this series was over pretty fast (~2 months). That’s how you do it! This way the reader doesn’t have to remember plot points for half of a year like happens with a customary 6-part story. Bravo Marvel!
2. Great art, starting with Humberto Ramos’ pencils. The only downside to Ramos’ art is that you’re going to get an occasional wonky looking face or body. That’s just going to happen with a heavily stylized brand of art like Ramos uses. But the benefit to that style more that makes up for it because it allows Ramos to over-emphasize actions and body language in such a way that the storytelling is strong as hell. Kudos should also go to the inkers for not ruining the energy of Ramos’ pencils and Delgado who always is strong with his colors.
3. Some interesting things in the Spider-romance department. Oh boy! This gets into heavy SPOILER territory but……MJ busts out the “L” word on Peter in the middle of the final battle. From a personal standpoint, I’m not that excited to see Peter and MJ potentially back together. We’ve been watching that romance for ~40 years and we’ve seen them break up enough that I kinda feel like they’re just “not good for each other” even if there is love there. But…that’s just me. The good thing is that Peter’s romantic life seems to be swirling again and that’s always a good thing. However, the romance front also held one of the disappointments in this issue: Where’s Carlie? Given how big the Peter/Carlie relationship was in the early issues of Spider-Island and how honestly Carlie dealt with her Spider-powers, it’s a big miss that she isn’t even mentioned in this issue. Surely she’ll show up in the epilogue issue in a few weeks, but she should have been addressed in this issue.
4. Really good action for the guest stars. Pretty much everyone gets into the action here. Cap and Venom team up. The FF get some action. X-Men and Avengers are involved in the final fight. Even some B-listers get into it. Heck, this felt like more of a line-wide event than the other event that ended last week. It also had a lot of great call backs to previous Spidey-stories: the light-bending suit from Slott’s Big Time arc, Kaine’s death from The Grim Hunt, the octobots and control helmet from issue #600… This is the kinda stuff that makes readers feel rewarded for sticking with these series over the long haul. And all of these references have appropriate editor notes!
5. Nice use of the tie-in series. The tie-ins for Spider-Island were all excellent, but the way they integrated with the main series was really special. Most of the series felt pretty important as their events were referenced in the main series, but none of the tie-ins were required reading. That’s a difficult line to walk and massive credit should go to Stephen Wacker and his Spider-editors.
Conclusion: We could use some more events of this quality. It featured an entertaining story with good integration of the tie-in material and wonderful art all around. This finale issue was all you could really ask of a ending.
Grade: A
-Dean Stell
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