Reviews

Araña, Vol. 1: The Heart of the Spider by Fiona Kai Avery, Mark Brooks

electrospino's review

hopeful inspiring lighthearted medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

jennykeery's review

3.0

A heavily Buffy-inspired story about a spidey Chosen One. Quite fun and I like Anya, but I wasn't a massive fan of the caricaturey art.

sonud's review

adventurous funny mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

Felt kinda messy as a backstory,  didn't really feel like we got an explanation of what happened or what her powers are now, but it was kinda fun hope the next issues are better.

lberestecki's review

3.0

I liked Anya a lot, but the story left a bit too be desired. It felt like not much was explained, and the reader was kind of just thrown into things.

delladahlia's review

2.0

It's like Marvel went to a group of staffers and went "We want a Latina teen hero series by next week".

What had the potential to be a great corner of the Marvel universe turns out to be rather a let-down. Horrible pacing, unremarkable art, and underdeveloped cast. CLEARLY a rush job; but a decent introduction to the Girl-Who-Would-Be-Spider-Girl and interesting concepts.

I'm not sure if I'm invested enough to read Vol. 2, but who knows? This only came up because I wanted some Spider-related reading after finishing the spider-verse run.

lilradridinghood's review

lighthearted fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

birdmanseven's review

2.0

I didn't know what to expect here and while there were things I liked, I found it a little clunky. Anya is a fun character and I enjoyed seeing her thrust into this mystic spider-world, but this volume was all lead-in and no story. There's three volumes and I plan to keep going. Onward and upward, Arana.

We talked about this series over on the All the Books Show: https://soundcloud.com/allthebooks/episode-266-banned-books-and-rays-of-sunshine

shortstackkat's review

2.0

Eh. It’s purely an origin story but there wasn’t a whole lot of meat to make me really get invested in the rest of the series. I did laugh at the costume idea panels but the rest was kinda bland.

larakaa's review

adventurous hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Like a mixture of Spider-Girl and Witchblade both in visual and narrative presentation

my_forest_library's review

3.0

I'm going to write a bullet point review since I'm tired and using my phone.

- This has nothing to do with Spiderman whatsoever.

- Wow, does anyone oversee the artwork? There were some specific frames that could have been drawn by a 9 year-old beginning art student.

- Anya is ridiculously gullible. Who's to say she's not working for the evil company? Some strange guy comes up and says, "Hey, you work for me now" and she's just totally okay with it.

- Not the best dialogue in the world. Maybe it will get better.

- My biggest complaint: why did they choose to print this darkly colored comic on cheap, highly textured (non-glossy) paper? I could hardly see the images half the time. Ugh.

- Regardless of all that, I will probably continue the series to see if it gets any better.