Scan barcode
A review by melbsreads
Spider-Woman, Volume 1: Spider-Verse by Dennis Hopeless, Greg Land, Travis Lanham, Jay Leisten, Frank D'Armata, Morry Hollowell
2.0
Okay, here's the thing: I only picked this up because I saw that it was Marvel Now. And usually, the first volume of any Marvel Now comic is intended as a fresh start, somewhere for newbies to jump into a series and not have to worry about decades of backstory.
And yet this? Was the opposite of a typical Marvel Now volume 1. Jessica bounces through multiple universes. There's a lot of backstory that isn't explained anywhere. There are multiple Jessicas, multiple Peters. Silk and Spider-Gwen feature repeatedly, but with only passing comments about who they actually are. Carol Danvers turns up at the end, which was a breath of fresh air, but it also features Old Man Steve Rogers with no mention of how or why he's suddenly old, and basically? AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH THIS WAS NOT A GOOD INTRODUCTION TO ANYTHING.
The art was...fine? You know, if you can get past the fact that every single female character looks the same and was drawn in a very sexualised way. The way female characters were standing seemed really...odd??...a lot of the time, and other reviews are telling me that the artist is a great one for taking shots of models or stills from pornos, tracing them, and inserting them into comics. That certainly explains a hell of a lot about the weird poses and the porny facial expressions that the female characters often have.
The thing I enjoyed most about this? The original appearance of Spider-Woman from the 1970s. Despite the terrible, dated art, that story made a hell of a lot more sense to me than anything in the Marvel Now story, which was basically a big ol' hot mess of confusion unless you're an ongoing fan of the Spider-verse.
And yet this? Was the opposite of a typical Marvel Now volume 1. Jessica bounces through multiple universes. There's a lot of backstory that isn't explained anywhere. There are multiple Jessicas, multiple Peters. Silk and Spider-Gwen feature repeatedly, but with only passing comments about who they actually are. Carol Danvers turns up at the end, which was a breath of fresh air, but it also features Old Man Steve Rogers with no mention of how or why he's suddenly old, and basically? AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH THIS WAS NOT A GOOD INTRODUCTION TO ANYTHING.
The art was...fine? You know, if you can get past the fact that every single female character looks the same and was drawn in a very sexualised way. The way female characters were standing seemed really...odd??...a lot of the time, and other reviews are telling me that the artist is a great one for taking shots of models or stills from pornos, tracing them, and inserting them into comics. That certainly explains a hell of a lot about the weird poses and the porny facial expressions that the female characters often have.
The thing I enjoyed most about this? The original appearance of Spider-Woman from the 1970s. Despite the terrible, dated art, that story made a hell of a lot more sense to me than anything in the Marvel Now story, which was basically a big ol' hot mess of confusion unless you're an ongoing fan of the Spider-verse.