Adam Graham's Blog: Christians and Superheroes - Posts Tagged "spider-gwen"

Spider-Women by Robbie Thompson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Spider-women is a crossover between Spider-woman, Silk, and Spider-Gwen. It begins with Jessica Drew (aka Spider-woman) travelling with Cindy Moon (Silk) to Spider-Gwen's Earth 65 for brunch when there's a monster attack which serves as a distraction for stealing Gwen's Inter dimensional travel watch, thus stranding Cindy and Jessica on Earth 65, this particularly hard on Jessica as it puts her a universe away from her baby.

What follows is a story filled with action, evil other dimensional dopplegangers, not so evil dimensional dopplegangers, powers lost, and all sorts of amazing revelations. Mostly though, it's a marketing attempt to get readers of one Spider book interested in all the other ones.

Overall, it's fun. The book showcases each character's strengths. The book collects two issues of each character's book and also Spider-women Alpha and Omega as the beginning and end of the series. There are one or two weaker issues. The first Spider-Gwen issue was the one that stands out to me. It's not a classic, but it's for what it is.



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Spider-Gwen, Vol. 0: Most Wanted? by Jason Latour

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book introduces Gwen Stacy, the Spider-woman of another Earth. It collects her initial appearance in Edge of the Spider-verse and the first five issues of her ongoing series.

The book works pretty well. The story is likable and heroic. The story is fun and even though it wasn't resolved at the end, I found myself wanting to read more. I also liked a few of the nice call-backs to the main Peter Parker from TV and comics.

If I had one complaint is that the book has a lot of characters from the 616 Marvel Universe who are different in this one. With the exception of Frank Castle, no effort is made to explain or show why they're different, they just are. Hopefully, they'll work on that in future volumes.



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Spider-Gwen, Vol. 1: Greater Power by Jason Latour

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This starts Gwen's ongoing series and is quite good. While there's some nice action, this is very much a character-based story which really helps to have Gwen as well as Captain Stacy and Normie Osborn grow and become more interesting.

In addition to the character, the book does a nice job of laying the groundwork for things to come in future issues. Overall, this series is starting solidly and firing on all cylinders.



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Spider-Gwen, Vol. 2: Weapon of Choice by Jason Latour

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Spider-gwen first book after the Spider-women event and it becomes apparent how bad an idea it was to give her a crossover event that altered her status quo this early.

The story isn't bad, but its far weaker than in the first two volumes and has the character taking a dark turn in a way that's just doesn't work for me this early in the series.



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Spider-Gwen, Vol. 3: Long-Distance by Jason Latour

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


This is...bad. After Gwen selling out to Kingpin Matt Murdoch in the last book, we get two issues of Spider-Gwen, we get two issues where nothing happens. We have a Thanksgiving Issue and a Christmas Issue. Spider-woman from the 616 Universe guest stars in the Thanksgiving Issue, but her appearance is pointless. The art on the Thanksgiving Issue is just so cartoonish and silly.

Then we get the Spider-Gwen Annual which is pretty much incoherent. The best idea in there is that in Gwen's Universe, Steve Rogers is a Comic book artist that drew Captain America, but beyond that, the Annual's just a confusing nearly unreadable mess.

Then we get an All-New Wolverine Annual that a crossover with Spider-Gwen. It's the best thing in the book even though its dull, tedious, and unoriginal body swapping story that is out of touch with the continuity of the guest character. That it's the best thing in the book says volumes about how bad the rest of it is.

This book was a waste of time. I'll read the crossover with Miles Morales, but I'm on the verge of quitting my read through this.



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Spider-Man/Spider-Gwen: Sitting in a Tree by Brian Michael Bendis

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book crosses-over three issues of the Miles Morales Spider-man book and Spider-Gwen as Miles travels to Gwen Stacy's dimension, Earth-65. The story ahs some fun moments, particularly when we get into other characters from the Spider-verse getting involved.

So why don't I rate it higher?

Well, it does go on a bit long. There's not enough story here for six issues, it's padded. It also doesn't really advance the ongoing character arc of either character.

Here's the biggest problem. The book is based around a kiss and the idea of romance between Gwen and Miles. The romance really feels forced and with the age difference, it's slightly inappropriate. It's the central point of the cover and the kiss is built up in the issue, and it really never goes anywhere. Simply telling a Miles/Gwen crossover where they meet and get to know each other and then maybe they start to develop feelings would have made sense, but it seems someone had the mandate that they had to kiss by the end of the mini-series, no matter how inconsequential the kiss turned out to be.

I'm not giving it 2 stars because this is an improvement over the last bit of Dreck from Spider-Gwen and it has fun moments, and some interesting artistic content, but man does it trick you and haven utterly pointless central theme.



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