Spider-Man and Wolverine #1 // Review
Peter Parker is late for a date. That’s kind of his thing, though. He’s meeting a girl for coffee who just might be able to tolerate his lateness. She tells him she’s got him figured out. (She hasn’t. She doesn’t know about his condition or his costume.) Things are only going to get a bit more difficult for him to explain when a hirsute, little Canadian shows-up on a motorcycle shows-up for him in Spider-Man and Wolverine #1. Writer Marc Guggenheim has a bit of fun with two of Marvel’s most iconic characters in an issue brought to the page by artist Kara Andrews and colorist Brian Reber.
It’s something called the Janus Directory, It’s a comprehensive databased of the world’s double agents. Seems like a fairy tale. Wolverine thought it might be, but it turns out to have been very, very real and now he’s trying to track it down...and he’s going to need the help of someone who is both a genius AND amazingly good in the middle of danger. Peter Parker happens to fit all the right qualifications, so he’s pulled out of a coffee date and into the middle of some very, very dangerous stuff with some very, very dangerous people.
Guggenheim’s script feels like a bit of a mess at first. It’s like he’s just throwing a whole bunch oof different Marvel tropes in the blender and letting them run their course. There’s more to it than that, though. A lot more. And it’s fun to watch it develop once the momentum really gets going. Guggenheim could have spent a little bit more time setting things up in a coherent fashion, but the sudden rush to action IS a lot of fun once things really get going. It’s just a bit of a mess.
Andrews has a sharp eye for the kind of ridiculously exaggerated action that makes for a fun fight on the comics page. What’s more...the art definitely has a very firm understanding of what makes Spider-Man and Wolverine’s fighting styles distinct. Action jumps across the page with a grand sense of physical drama. Reber’s colors add the kind of depth an luminosity to the page that makes the visual world that’s being presented feel respectably immersive. It’s a very sharp sense of execution throughout that feels deliciously amplified. It might feel a bit goofy in places, but it’s well-executed.
The revelations that hit the page at the end of the issue feel a bit forced, but it’s kind of a fun journey to the last page anyway. What feels like it could have been a perfectly satisfying one-shot extends itself into something more as the the mini-series begins to ramp-up. It’s a fun opening to a potentially promising new story. That being said...there are A LOT of opportunities for the series to go off th rails in a thoroughly unsatisfying way. There are a lot of ways that a team-up like this could be cool, but Guggenheim and company have more chances to mess this up beyond the first issue.
