“The One and Only-Ish”
Creative Staff:
Story: Dan Slott
Art: Mark Bagley, John Dell
Colors: Edgar Delgado
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagna
What They Say:
The End of the Spider-Verse is here! Morlun is back and he is not alone. Allied with one of the most powerful beings known to the Spider-Verse, the scariest Spider-Villain of all time is making his biggest play and no Spider is safe. Especially not the Chosen Spider himself, Peter Parker. With Peter working for Norman Osborn and using a glider…does he have it coming? Spidey’s 60th Anniversary is no joke as two of the most legendary Spider-Creators are working together on Spidey for the first time and you know it’s going to be one for the record books!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I haven’t read many of the Spider-books over the years and the last one I read at any length was during the run with Doc Ock in Peter’s body, which I enjoyed. The start of a new series offers a chance to see where things stand, however, and jumping in is easy enough even though the bulk of my Spidey days were throughout the 80s and early 90s. Dan Slott certainly knows how to write the character and we’re clearly setting a big storyline here across the Spider-Verse. It also doesn’t hurt that the incredibly talented Mark Bagley is handling the art duties with John Dell inking and Edgar Delgado bringing the color design to it. The result is a well-detailed book with some great dynamic action and a lot going on. And, honestly, between the art and the writing, it almost feels like too much as there’s just no time to breathe and take in this Peter Parker.
The general gist covered in the opening pages is that he’s now working for Oscorp under the reformed but harsh Norman Osborne who knows who he is and has designed his suit. He keeps close tabs on Peter by simply knowing him and being a genius himself, which is unnerving for Peter. I do like that he has the little Bug robot that he uses as part of his operations now, a nice update for the Spidey character, and as we see him ushered into action by Norman to stop a heist of some of Oscorp’s materials by some thieves we get a good feel for his humor and interactions with both the criminals, who are very low-threat, and the regular New Yorkers, who are all pretty much into enjoying the experience. In a way, it reminds me of some of those older Superman comics where residents of Metropolis didn’t live in so much fear because they knew Superman was there. I rather like seeing Spidey taking up that mantle, even at the cost of his outsider-ness.
While we get this simple storyline getting underway, the bigger picture is there as well as this is a Spider-Verse story. And we learn of someone named Shathra that exists to cut all sorts of spider-people out of the cosmic web across the spider-verse and she’s angling after Peter, who is the chosen one across all the timelines. That has those in the secret Spider-Verse HQ aware that things are going bad and it goes really badly for Peter as Morlun of all people show up, which freaks him out. Of course, Morlun is there to help and warn of what’s coming but we get the obligatory out-of-the-gate fight first, with a few others showing up to help like Miles and Jessica. But it turns bad when the real bad guys show up and Jess has her connection to the great web removed and she fades out of existence, which understandably freaks everyone else. Then having actual insect-like versions of some of them show up to carry on more of the fight just takes it up a few more notches and entices you to come back.
In Summary:
Spider-Man suffers from something that a lot of Marvel books that I’ve dipped my toes into over the last few months where it’s just so busy. There’s no time to establish things beyond a couple of narration boxes and a quip or two of dialogue. We’re thrown into things hard and fast, which is fine, but there’s no moment to breathe in this issue at all before the deluge of other Spider-characters shows up. Which again, is fine, but it’s very limiting. But at the same time I understand that you have to do this in order to keep people hooked and draw them in to come back for more. It’s just unfortunate because I would have loved, coming into this after years away from the character, to have a chance to see where things stand and what’s going on more than we get. There’s a lot of the fundamentals of Spider-Man here and it does what Marvel does well, but it lacks the opportunity to connect with the characters and their lives.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: October 5th, 2022
MSRP: $4.99
