Spider-Man and the X-Men #2

Oh Spider-Man and the X-Men, you sounded like the perfect comic, but, alas, the first issue was merely lukewarm. It feels as though Elliott Kalan has hit a little more of his stride this month, but many of the same problems remain.

Most significantly, a lot of the dialogue reads rather deadpan. I can almost always tell what Kalan intends in a scene but often enough there just isn’t emotion behind the words. I have no doubt that Kalan is a very funny man but many of the jokes don’t land. Spider-Man’s jokes are intentionally bad, but Kalan still opts to include them. Honestly, the more it reads like Kalan is trying to be a comic writer the less effective his writing is. The gags fall flat and a lot of the attempts at character building feel forced, but there are little bits of character woven into the characters’ more standard speech that brings a certain charm out of them. The interesting dialogue is bland, but the way Kalan goes about his bland exposition is actually pretty interesting.

This means that Spider-Man, as the book’s headliner, feels wasted in a number of scenes, however some of his students come across pretty well. Ernst’s reads more or less like a teenaged girl, a feat even some expert writers fail at. As for Shark Girl, she hasn’t been written this well since her introduction, quite possibly ever. There’s just enough confusion in her voice to remind you she’s a teenager but for any fears of being a mindless brute, a fear that seems oddly truthful, she handles herself quite well. I’ll also guess that Kalan likes Rockslide, as his nerdy, Thing-esque characterization is another highlight of the team. The rest of the students are fairly forgettable, but, while it’s not a great way to open a series, there are some notable twinkles of potential.

If there are characters whose voices come through loud and clear, it’s our villains. Though much of their dialogue is fairly standard, Sauron and Stegron have a classic dynamic. I’m admittedly predisposed towards Stegron, but I found Kalan’s take to be one of the stronger elements of the issue. Sauron is a little too 80s cartoon villain for my liking, but Stegron’s somewhat sympathetic villainy and oddly sweet conversation with Shark Girl won me over. Kalan’s dialogue also jumps up in quality whenever the two dinosaur men are bickering. They also reveal Kalan’s greatest strength.

For any problems in execution, the ideas behind this issue are great. Some of them are a little too heavily indebted to old Loony Toons bits, but those are classics for a reason and Kalan adds just enough of his own twist onto them to justify their inclusion. The combination of Sauron and Stegron makes odd but perfect sense, as does the method of their defeat, and by the end you can see that this was a pretty clever Shark Girl story from the beginning. Even more impressive is the ending, which not only uses our knowledge of comedy tropes to obscure a fairly blatant reveal, but sets up the next arc of the series and the format of the title going forward. Nothing’s going to top a Dinosaur Men team-up in terms of brilliance, but I’m actually pretty interested to see where Kalan takes us next.

I’m still oddly put off by Marco Failla’s wide-eyed Spider-Man design, but he’s definitely a good fit for the book. The straightforward, energetic art is very appropriate to this series. Failla’s gags don’t always match up with Kalan’s the way I might hope, but they’re very much appreciated, all the same.

While I’m still having some trouble placing my finger on what’s causing some of the emotional disconnect, part of me wonders if it isn’t the mixing of the art and text. While Failla does a fine job of rendering the demands of the script, he doesn’t seem the most interested in communicating the particular emotions of the characters on a panel by panel basis, which sometimes leaves the reader with a visual impression of the panel’s intent and an aligned but different take from the dialogue. It’s also possible that the book was written using the Marvel-method, meaning that this would fall at Kalan’s feet and also explain the disconnect a little.

Nonetheless, Failla does a great job representing the three monstrous characters in the spotlight this month. The heavier-set Stegron design is starting the grow on me and contrasts nicely with the spindly Sauron. Failla even manages to get some pretty impressive emotions out of the three, considering that they have the heads of a Pteranodon, a Stegosaurus, and a Great White Shark. I’m also fairly impressed with the Triceratops in this issue, especially a rather odd looking one that shows up mid-way through the issue, very emotive and impressively cute.

Some panels are a little sparse, looking as though Failla might have intended to fill in background detail if time permitted. Still there’s a natural movement to the pages and the backgrounds are only really distracting when they fall in between the dramatically bare and the comfortably dense, panels with one or two consoles casually thrown in and the like.