"Spider-Verse"

 

The following is a review of the Marvel Comics Event “Spider-Verse” as presented on Marvel Unlimited. It is not a review of the film “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” nor a piece about the film “Spider-Man: No Way Home.”

Howdy, everybody, you have now clicked into From the Mind of One Tim Cubbin! This is Tim Cubbin reporting! I’m a certified journalist, yet due to my disability, I am unable to get a true, steady job, in the journalism field or any other career. But, I want to get my words out there, so I do this blog unpaid, out of the goodness of my heart, hoping someone like you will read my little posts, and if you are reading this, despite knowing I’m NOT talking about Spider-Man films, you are THE BEST!

Okay, if you’re new to From the Mind of One Tim Cubbin and have never read my reviews before, I usually try to keep a standardized format of… well, reviewing it. Today, the first thing we’re going to do (after my boring intro) is talk about a few of the main characters. Regular readers know I give backgrounds, including origins of the characters and some of the history of the story needed to actually survive this review. BUT! This IS “Spider-Verse” and there were dozens of Spider-Men, Spider-Women, and even Spider-Animals, so I’m only going to talk about a select few that are either the best known or the most important. After that, I will continue the synopsis which will be briefly described in the character introductions and tell a good deal about the stories, avoiding spoilers as much as possible (and thank you NOT to the people who have already spoiled “No Way Home” and ruined the surprises, oh the joy of social media). Following that, I’m going to put in my two cents and talk about my personal take on it, including things I liked and disliked and how I felt reading it. After that, I’ll tell you how much I think you need to know about Spider-Man history in order to fully get it, which I call accessibility. Following that, I’ll give this whole event my own personal numeric score (we’ll get to that when we get to that). Then I’ll tell you if I actually recommend this story, especially including who I recommend the story to, looking back to accessibility. Then I give my boring conclusion paragraph where I tell you what else my blog has, and then you are free to go about your merry way. Well, now, let’s go to what you ACTUALLY WANT to read instead of my incessant blabbing (which, if you’re still here makes you THE BEST!).

First off, I’ll briefly tell you some of the major or most well-known Spider-Men, Spider-Women and Spider-Animals involved in the story. I am avoiding origin stories this time as it would take FOREVER to do and I only want to hold you for a few more minutes. Most of the Spiders are Peter Parker, but we do have a few other Spiders mixed in. The main Spider is Peter Parker/the Amazing Spider-Man who was introduced in 1962. We also have Peter Parker/Otto Octavius/the Superior Spider-Man (Doctor Octopus from the main Marvel Universe in Peter Parker’s body), Billy Braddock/Spider-UK, Gwen Stacy/Spider-Woman (best known as “Spider-Gwen), Miles Morales/Spider-Man, Peter Porker/Spider-Ham, Cindy Moon/Silk, Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman, Jessica Drew/Black Widow, Ben Reilly/Spider-Man, Kaine Parker/Scarlet Spider, Pavitr Prabhakar/Spider-Man, Penelope Parker/Sp//dr, Ben Parker/Old Man Spider-Man, Miguel O’Hara/Spider-Man 2099, Peter Parker/The Spider-Man (better known as Spider-Man Noir), Peter Parker/Spider-Monkey, Ashley Barton/Spider-Woman, Anya Corazon/Spider-Girl, Mayday Parker/Spider-Girl, May Reilly/Lady-Spider, Peter Parker/Six-Armed Spider-Man, Peter Parker/Captain Universe, Hobie Brown/Spider-Punk, May Parker/Spider Ma’am, many other Peter Parkers from other media such as cartoons and movies, several other Spiders who are not Peter Parker, those who were so minor they weren’t really identified; I mean, SO MANY SPIDERS! There are THOUSANDS of universes, most of them having at least ONE Spider, this list could go on for pages if they were all identified.

Okay, now, we’ve talked about ALL the Spiders I could think of, now we’ll talk about the villains. The Spiders are facing a family of energy suckers who feed off of the essences of Spider-Totems, all of them now obsessed with our group of Spiders who are all big juicy Spider-Totems. This family call themselves the Inheritors. This family is made up of Solus, Daemos, Verna, Brix, Bora, and Morlun. An Inheritor cannot truly be destroyed as they will return to clone bodies upon their deaths.

Well, now that we’ve got all of them squared away, let’s talk about the stories. Like many good stories, the central story focuses on a prophecy. It tells of the Inheritors’ defeat by the Spider-Totems of the Multiverse. The only way to prevent their demise is to slay three Spider-Totems: the Bride, the Scion, and the Other. This would insure that no other Spider-Totems would be created and the Inheritors will inherit the Multiverse. The identities of the Spider-Totems in the prophecy are Cindy Moon/Silk (the Bride), Benji Parker (the Scion), and Kaine Parker/Scarlet Spider (the Other). The Spiders band together with missions to defeat the Inheritors, travelling through all different realities where friends are foes, foes are allies, and things are all backwards from their home realities.

So, now I have a few things to say. I thought this story was AMAZING (no pun intended)! I LOVED EVERY ISSUE! I thought the writing was top notch. I thought all of the writers, er, spun a good web.  Some of my readers know that I am VERY keen about artwork. This can TOTALLY interfere with my scoring. The artwork never disappointed me. I especially enjoyed the throwbacks to specific realities. In one story, several Spiders travelled to the reality of the original 1967 cartoon, and I thought that was great. The artist TOTALLY caught the essence of the old series, mimicking the original artwork style perfectly, and it was like putting speech bubbles in the cartoon (I’m about to turn thirty-four in a month, but I watched that cartoon on DVD when I was a kid). I also liked the story featuring Peter Parker from the “Ultimate Spider-Man” animated series. And there were several other Easter eggs that long-time Spidey fans would pick up. All-in-all, I thoroughly enjoyed this event, and prior readers of this blog know I am very hard to please.

Okay, now we move on to accessibility. I don’t actually give this a numeric score, but I do say how easy a story is to pick up. In this case, I thought the event was very much self-contained. I feel that it’s relatively easy to pick up, even for fans who have never read a Spider-Man comic before and have only seen films or cartoons or have never had any prior experience with Spidey. Knowing a little background helps, but I don’t think it was essential. Some of these Spiders were only just introduced in the event, and there were origin stories contained where they were needed, so I feel this makes this easy to understand. Yes, there were Spiders with established history (considering Spidey was created in 1962 and this event was published in 2014), but I don’t think the long-term history is a hindrance. Hold that thought, we’ll return to this in two paragraphs.

Now, the moment you’ve been waiting for… my numeric score. I’ve already talked a lot about my feelings so this paragraph will be relatively brief. I score on a scale of one to ten. One means this was absolutely horrible (but you know I’m not scoring ANYWHERE near that), ten means in was mind-blowingly awesome. So I score it at… drumroll please… NINE! There were a few points that I didn’t like so unfortunately I couldn’t give it a perfect score, but it was pretty close for me.

Alright, we’re almost to the end (if you’re still here you are THE BEST!). Well, let’s see, I did say something about recommendation, didn’t I? So, do I recommend it? YES! YES! A thousand times, YES! If you’re a fan of any Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, or Spider-Animal, check this out as they are just about guaranteed to be there somewhere. If you’ve always wanted to read a Spider-Man comic but don’t know where to start, I think this book is a pretty good jump-in point. If you just saw “No Way Home” and want to get a TRUE Spider-Verse story, this is the right book for you. If you’ve never even HEARD of Spider-Man before reading this post and decided this sounds interesting, I totally recommend reading this. HOWEVER! I CANNOT tell you if this is a good story. For me, yes, it was a great story. But it might not be good for YOU. I can’t tell you how to feel. There are those of you who may say “No Way Home” was the best movie ever made, while some of you may say the hype was wrong and regret buying a ticket. We’re all entitled to our own opinions. This post is mine, feel free to have yours.

Okay, I’ve probably bored you just about long enough. BUT! If you liked this, I’ve already written more than seventy posts, many of which being book reviews, so feel free to read more book reviews when looking for something to read, I might have a few good recommendations for you. I also write editorials (being a certified journalist), I write essays, I write short fiction and non-fiction, I write poetry, I do all kinds of things, so if you like my writing style, feel free to explore more From the Mind of One Tim Cubbin. So now, if you’re still here, you are THE BEST! I hope you’ll come back, I post fairly regularly so keep checking, and till next time, Tim Cubbin… out!