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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 5 years

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Spider-Force #2 Thoughts

The text at the issue’s end advertising issue #3 includes the phrase ‘what-the-heck-just-happened’.

All too appropriate for this series.

In issue #1 there was a sense of...confusion on my part. A sense of ‘why is this happening, who are these people, what’s going on’. Not for the over all plot but for specific elements, such as regarding Charlie. I thought maybe the consequent issues will flesh this out.

But with issue #2 I doubt that.

Some things were answered but other things played out in head scratching ways. In fairness I think it’s less a matter of what happened so much as the presentation of it.

I think the key example here is Ashley and Charlie’s relationship.

The idea that Ashley would seek to connect to a version of her grandfather isn’t an uninteresting angle per se.

However having her open up to Charlie and encourage Charlie himself to open up to her whilst they are literally tumbling through space is a baffling creative decision. I’m wondering if Priest went that direction to be funny (he does lampshade it a little) or if he just needed to cram it in there.

This baffling use of presentation applies to stuff that is initially confusing but gets answered later, but isn’t presented initially as something that is posing a mystery or a question in the first place. One example would be Charlie’s initial recruitment and him saving the falling safe. Another would be when we get 3 flashbacks in a row from the POV of Astro-Spider, Ashley and Charlie. When you first see this it’s very confusing because they don’t seem to line up and it’s not clear that we are getting flashbacks to all 3 characters. The fact that Charlie’s past was being dived into was immediately made clear when he yells for Astro-Spider to get out of his head. But it isn’t until way later in the comic that we find out we also got to see Ashley’s past.

Granted maybe that’s on my end because I’m not overly familiar with Ashley.

This brings up a point of debate regarding presumed knowledge on the readers’ parts. I have read Old Man Logan but it was a while back and shockingly I was more focussed upon Logan’s story than anyone else’s. And yet knowing the wider world building and Ashley’s angle would’ve made a point of alienation in the story much more accessible, but I was never told or reminded of that aspect. In contrast though Astro-Spider’s origin is clearly connected to the cosmic rays that created the Fantastic Four. And at first I didn’t bat an eye at that because of course I know the F4’s origins. But then I got to Ashley’s character and it made me realize if you didn’t know the F4’s origin you’d seriously be baffled by Astro-Spider’s. So at the end of the day I feel very much it’s a failing on Priest’s part that he doesn’t have some kind of exposition or explanation that will be more inviting to new or unfamiliar readers. After all it’s maybe one thing to presume general knowledge about Spider-Man when you are writing a Spidey tie-in for a Spidey event but quite another when doing that to presume they’ve also read F4 and Wolverine comics.

Even putting aside the issue of presumed knowledge there is a certain...cheapness to the modest exploration of Ashley’s character and her relationship with Charlie.

Now I read Old Man Logan a while back (and wasn’t impressed at all) and don’t remember everything about it. I also didn’t read all of Spider-Verse and skimmed a lot of the stuff I did ‘read’. So maybe I’m forgetting or in the dark about something in need of enlightening. But I don’t remember Ashley being a sexual abuse survivor. I don’t remember Ashley having particular connections to her grandpa Peter Parker.

These elements to her are thrown into this and the last comic and then exaggerated in order to give her some kind of emotional angle through her connection to Charlie. Now first of all throwing in so casually an abuse backstory for any character is pretty messed up (not helped when pages later the Inheritors are framed as pedophiles when...they’re really not at all). Second of all if Ashley really felt this kind of connection to her grandpa...wouldn’t that have come up earlier?

I mean she is emphasising a familiar connection with a version of Peter Parker who doesn’t wear the regular costume, has a drastically different character and backstory, isn’t even called ‘Peter’ and is barely a teenager not an older man like her grandpa. Surely there were other Peter Parkers around more closely resembling her grandfather. IIRC wasn’t Otto in Spider-Verse pretending to be Peter Parker initially? What about Kaine even? You could argue she connects with Charlie due to a similar backstory of being a child victim and growing up fast, but other Spiders were tough too and even if you disagree again it’s just sort of thrown in there. It’s lazy development.

It isn’t even that these aspects couldn’t be explored or make for interesting angles on what is ultimately a rather bland character. But they sort of just show up they aren’t conveyed or developed organically at all. The same applies to her over all relationship with Charlie.

If I had to guess the root of this is that there is too much going on in this comic. Priest simultaneously needs to serve the plot of the over all event he’s tying into but also wants to dosome character stuff and develop and flesh out his original contributions. And in 3 issues it just doesn’t work.

A street punk 13 year old Peter Parker who HATES Uncle Ben is a great idea.

A post-apocalyptic waste land criminal, childhood abuse surviving granddaughter of Spider-Man, who wants to connect some version of her long gone grandpa who represents the few good parts of her life is a great angle.

An astronaught Spider-Man who is a familiar face and leader of human survivors in space is a great idea.

A Spider Strikeforce on a suicide mission on a radioactive wasteland working against the clock is a great idea.

A morally grey clone of Peter Parker with a bloody past making tough decisions to serve the greater good is a great idea.

A Spider-Hero who just wants to protect the world for her baby’s sake is a great idea.

A Regency dressed totem vampire on the hunt for a crystal containing her father’s essence in space...is a shite idea but they can’t all be winners.

However when you do these things all at the same time...it becomes an inconsistent rushed mess.

Let’s tangent briefly to talk about a few (the only few) positives of the comic. The art continued to be good even though the new artists doing a few pages aren’t as good as the regular artists and the switch is very noticeable. And Astro-Spider...is a great idea. John Jameson as Spider-Man is something I’ve always been intrigued by but can’t recall ever happening before. This is different to what I imagined because I was thinking he’d be more traditional as Spider-Man not an astronaut version of Spidey. But it’s still brilliant, taking the most famous angle of John Jameson, the F4 and Spidey and smashing them together to create something visually dynamic and fitting for the world we’re in.

Okay the positives are over now lets get back to the problems.

Last issue the recap page seemed at odds with the internal comic story. The same is true for this issue but bizarrely the recap page is now saying something different so it’s at odds with the last issue’s recap page and still at odds with the comic itself.

We’ve gone from a group of Spiders not afraid to die to Spiders who’re willing to do whatever it takes. But last I checked that wasn’t true. Correct me if I’m wrong here but:

a) Was Charlie really established as being willing to do whatever it takes, which in context probably means killing people? He’s more rough and maybe more violent than 616 Peter but is he that extreme really?

b) In the Clone Saga Kaine killed people but he had a rule about hurting innocent people (some exceptions applied). Preeeeetty sure in his solo book at minimum the same applied or else he was in fact more against killing. Didn’t he NOT kill Kraven the Hunter specifically because of that? He also wasn’t ever willing to sacrifice anyone for the greater good last I checked. In fact this is one point I’m 99% resolutely sure is aggressively NOT in character for Kaine. For Otto sure, but Kaine as the comic implies. No fucking way. I dare you to prove me wrong.

c) I know Spider Woman has had spy and HYDRA associations, but is she really of the Wolverine school of thought when it comes to killing. I’m possibly wrong but I don’t think her morals regarding how hardcore you get are that different to Peter Parker’s

So what’s the deal here?

Wouldn’t it be easier to just say this is a team of Spider Bad asses who’re willing to get more rough and violent than the other hero’s?

Part of Kaine’s (meagre) characterization in this story is in fact connected to the ‘whatever it takes’ angle of the story. Like I said this is very out of character for Kaine but it also makes the story more inconsistent. The rationale for Charlie’s inclusion has seemed to be implied variously as him being rougher, him being willing to die (based on what?), him being willing to do whatever it takes (based on what?), him being willing to save people from a falling safe (just like...pretty much ever Spider-Hero here) and now we’re hearing it’s because he’s bait.

Because the Inheritors are sort of like pedophiles apparently and they like that young spider meat, like veal I guess. Um....again correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure that’s bullshit, pretty sure the youth of their targets isn’t that big of a deal to them. But then again I’m also pretty sure that they can only drain the life forces of totems yet Verna bafflingly can just take ANYONE’s life forces...wtf??????

Connected to this WTFness is the fact that Charlie out of nowhere seems to just know the Inheritors have a preference for young meat. How and when did he figure that out exactly? He didn’t even know about the Inheritors until less than 24 hours ago.

Speaking of time...let’s do a rundown of everything that’s happened between their arrival in issue #1 to the end of issue #2.

So they’ve shown up, Kaine’ sabotaged their transport devices, they’ve battled Astro-Spider, he’s given them exposition and they’ve talked, they’ve located and boarded his space ship, then they’ve had an alert from his space station prompting another skirmish, then they’ve gone into space, divided their team, gotten to their designated target zones and whilst all this is going on Verna got into the station with her gang and had killed over 30 people and searched the place.

And according to issue #1 aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall that...happens in under 15 minutes...

Fuck.

Off.

More than anything that time limit has irreparably wrecked the internal logic and consistency of this story.

Even moreso than the fact that the baffling fact that Solus’ crystal somehow ended up in space. I mean last I checked Mayday threw it into the radioactive world for Daemos to fetch. I’m not saying there is no way for it to have been lost and taken into space but no comic in the entire event has addressed that at all.

Skim Astro-Spider’s backstory and pages if you want but otherwise I recommend not reading this crap.

P.S. The explanation for the name ‘Inheritors’ seems inconsistent with the explanation given previously IIRC

P.P.S. Editing this in after the fact. But...

a) How and why does John have the ruby that turns him into Man-Wolf if he’s got Spider powers?

b) How and why does John know who Peter Parker is? It’s written as though he knows he was the hero Spider-Man but in this universe he wasn’t Ben Parker was.

P.P.P.S. What was with all the PG swearing where they used safe versions of common curse words? It felt tryhard edgy to me.

#Spider-Force #Spider-Geddon #Morlun #Inheritors #the Inheritors #Spider-Man #Peter Parker #Christopher Priest #Ashley Barton #Kaine #Kaine Parker #Scarlet Spider #John Jameson #Spider Woman #Jessica Drew

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