Spider-Geddon #5 // Review
It’s hard to end event comics on a high note. Either the final issue falls flat on its face, or the ending delivered is so dissatisfying that readers simply consider the entire event a waste of time. Rarely, though, an event lands on the perfect note to end their story. Spider-Geddon, against all odds, has become one of those rare events.
Christos Gage once more takes the helm as writer, while he’s assembled one hell of a crew of artists. Jorge Molina and Carlo Barberi provide raw pencils, while Jay Leisten and Jose Marazan Jr ink those pencils. Pulling double-duty on both pencils and inks for this final issue are Stefano Caselli and Joey Vazquez, while David Curiel puts colors on the page. This makes seven people working on the art, something that is incredibly remarkable considering the final results. Travis Lanham once more comes back to letter the pages as well.
The Spiders are unfortunately scattered. Otto Octavius has apparently sold out the entire multiverse to the Inheritors, and has brought Ben Reilly’s Scarlet Spider as a sacrifice. Miles Morales’ crew of Spider-People has been able to summon the Enigma Force responsible for endowing people with the abilities Captain Universe, but the Force seems to delight in making everyone involve face their worst memories. With the remains of the teams of both Otto and Miles converging on the Inheritors headquarters, can anyone make it out alive?
Considering Marvel’s not cancelled the main Spider-Man books, and some new spinoffs are coming out, the answer might be spoiled already for some characters.
Christos Gage has an incredible job on this script. Packed with soft character beats, action sequences, and even some punch-at-the-air awesome moments, Spider-Geddon #5 is nothing short of what many fans had hoped for when the event was announced. Almost every single Spider-Person left standing shows up for this finale, including in-jokes like Spider-Cop and all the one-off Spiders from the Vault of Spiders sidestories. Cramming a book to the brim with at least thirty-one different Spider-Persons might make it hard to read, or a chaotic mess, but Gage does a great job juggling these characters and splitting page time appropriately. It was hard not to have a grin reading each page, but Gage also deserves special credit for being able to bridge the two entirely different driving ideologies of Miles’ “no kill” Spiders and Otto’s “kill ‘em all” Spider-team.
With so many artists on the book, seven as mentioned before, many event books can become muddied and hard to read. Or, worse, artists that don’t work well with one another are thrown together to make a Frankenstein’s Monster of a page. Jorge Molina, Carlo Barberi, Jay Leisten, Jose Marazan Jr, Stefano Caselli, Joey Vazquez, and David Curiel all come together like some sort of human Voltron to make a comic downright charming and enjoyable. Soft character beats between Spider-Man and Mary Jane of the Renew Your Vows timeline are touching, while action splashes across the page like nobody’s business around them. David Curiel also deserves some special praise for being able to tell all the Spiders apart enough to make sure they keep their appropriate shades of blue and red, as well as look unique enough that a casual glance shows which character is which.
Spider-Geddon has been one hell of a ride. While there were some rough spots with side stories being spoiled by releasing part of the story early, the event never dragged and rarely left readers confused or disillusioned over the story itself. As said above, landing even a satisfactory ending in an event is a great thing, and this entire team just nailed a 9.0 out of 10. Pick this comic up, or wait for the completed trade. Either way, this one’s worth your time.
