A Spider-man Fever Dream
TPB: Spider-Man Reign
Writer: Kaare Andrews
Artist: Kaare Andrews
Price: $14.99
On my first ever From The
Booth show, Randal asked me if I had ever stopped collecting comics and if so,
what comic got me collecting again. My answer
was yes I had and the comic that got me back in (along with a lot of other
people, I imagine) was The Dark Knight Returns. It’s easy to see why it’s so
popular. Our heroes are usually mortal and mortal beings age and become
weak. It’s an inevitability that we try
to avoid in telling their stories.
Batman was 29 years old for several decades and Spider-man stopped aging
around his 30th birthday as well.
Spider-man: Reign is an
attempt to look at what happens to Peter Parker years after he’s burned the
costume in the trashcan for what should have been the final time. In this future, a tyrannical government has
overtaken New York City and Reign troops terrorize the populace. Parker is now a senior citizen eking out a
meager existence working at a flower shop.
His wife and aunt are dead and his time as Spider-man seems like a
distant memory until J. Jonah Jameson comes to his door. Jameson knows who he was and recognizes that,
now more than ever, the city needs its savior.
Andrew Kaare is a Candian
comic book writer and illustrator who has done mostly covers along with some
single issues and very short runs on interior work for many popular
titles. More recently, he’s worked on Iron
Fist: The Living Weapon.
Although the premise seems
like a pretty cool idea for a Spider-man book, the execution falls flat. Children’s nursery rhymes are repeated over
and over sometimes relating to the panel where they are located, sometimes
not. Trite sayings abound as if Kaare
were attempting to make every bit of dialogue quotable. At one point the reason for Mary Jane’s death
is revealed (SPOILERS!) and it has to do with ALL of Spider-man’s fluids being
radioactive and cancer causing. Just think about that for a
minute. The panels also try to convey
inner turmoil through orchids being crushed and Mary Jane’s corpse being batted
about by a dead Doc Ock (whose arms still function autonomously) but the effect is that the entire
book comes off as creepy and deeply disturbing.
The art is well done with the
contrast of the clean, detailed art for children and the more stylized art with
jagged edges for the elderly incarnations of our favorite characters. The backgrounds suggest some digital work
which I always appreciate. However, the
art is not enough to save the book which veers back and forth between plot and
metaphor like a drunk.
Final rating (out of 5):
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