Welcome to the First Issue Bin, where I — Ethan Kaye — randomly grab one of this week's comics that’s just starting up and give you the details on whether it should get added to your collection … or remain on the comic shop shelf.
Spider-Man & Wolverine #1
Writer: Marc Guggenheim
Artist: Kaare Andrews
Color Artist: Brian Reber
Letterer: VC's Travis Lanham
Editor: Mark Basso
Hi y'all. I have been on vacation for a little bit and am just getting back into the swing of things!
So. The best analogy I can make about Marvel's new team-up series, Spider-Man & Wolverine is when you go to a restaurant, could be a trendy place or even just an ambitious diner, and you order their INSTAGRAM-WORTHY SIGNATURE SUPER FLASHY milkshake. You know the ones I'm talking about. The rim is frosted with thick cake icing and rainbow sprinkles, it has a slice of red velvet cake attached to the straw, and an orange popsicle stuck in there, plus a sparkler and it's blended with Froot Loops and a slice of peach pie. It's good, maybe a little too flashy for a beverage, and you can recommend it to people knowing they'd like it, but it's maybe a bit too much and you could have been happy with just a simple vanilla malted.
That is to say, I think I liked the first issue of Spider-Man & Wolverine but I'm not sure why. The art and the plot are just packed with goodies, like that milkshake. Not one but like SEVEN supervillains. Full-page splashes! Acts of Vengeance-style villain/hero match-ups! Wolverine in a Venom suit! Spider-Man crucified to an enormous X! Wolverine buried alive by Kraven the Hunter! Everyone has enormous thighs and shoulders! All it's missing is that red velvet cake.
It pushes all the right buttons, and in the right order, but afterwards you have to acknowledge that you were cruising too fast on a sugar high, and now your pancreas is looking for a new gig.
The plot is almost inconsequential to the art, which clearly takes center stage. (You hire Kaare Andrews to draw your book, you're going to get a very flashy book.) Wolverine is tasked by an old friend, Bill Branscome (first appearance), to steal back the Janus Directory, a classic MacGuffin "master database of the world's double agents". This is the NOC-list from the first Mission Impossible film. He seeks out Spider-Man, for no stated reason, to help him get the list back. They're attacked by Omega Red, Kraven the Hunter, and Mysterio, with Mysterio conjuring up multiple Spidey and X-Men baddies to fight. There's…not much else to the issue.
This ignores current continuity where Omega Red has been working with X-Force.
The art is delicious though, feeling that peach pie and the Froot Loops kick in there. Andrews is known for his exaggerated poses and high-velocity action scenes, and the middle of the book reads like an extended Buddy Rich drum solo. BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM and Spidey's flipping around and Wolverine crouches and springs his claws out and punches, punches, punches. And you get to see Andrews's take on classic villains and that's always neat. It's clear that this is an intentional throwback to that Scott Hanna art that was a trademark of the mid-late 90s Marvel. I liked it, but acknowledge it's not everyone's cup of tea. But like it or not, this book moves.
(Granted, everyone is crouching all the time. No one has legs that fully extend in this book.)
The plot is where the sugar high leaves you. Using a tired old cliche like the Janus Directory, coming from another one of Wolverine's "old friends", not really playing up the list's importance other than telling you it's important, then turning what probably should have been a careful secret op into a multi-page carnival of violence…kind of like empty calories you regret enjoying so much.
And to be clear, there's zero reason for Wolverine to partner with Spider-Man for this. The only explanation we're given is Wolverine interrupting Peter Parker's date with the criminally underused Shay Marken is "I need you for somethin'". It speaks more to the editorial directive to partner these characters up rather than a story that needed to be told.
Does that make it a bad book? No. Blind Faith was a supergroup full of the biggest rock stars and it did fine. There are enough examples of team-up books with huge properties that are still well regarded. Spider-Man/Deadpool was a triumph, and across the aisle at DC Mark Waid's Batman/Superman: World's Finest is one of the best things DC has to offer. You can do big team-ups without it feeling contrived. This one's fun to read, but doesn't feel authentic, like Cream reuniting not because they liked each other or wanted to create new music, but because the world just wanted to see Cream play again.
I know, I'm all metaphors today.
Art: 5/5
Story: 2/5
Thighs: 6/5
Reveal at the End: Doesn't seem sustainable
Joy of seeing a Kaare Andrews Green Goblin: 5/5
Verdict: A book that gives us so much but has us wanting so much more. Worth getting for the art, but if you're in it for the story, you'll be disappointed.
