All-New Spider-Gwen: The Ghost Spider #1 // Review
Gwen is being attacked. Out of nowhere. It’s okay, though: that was the idea. She wanted him to attack...but she didn’t want him to hold back the way he is. And so she’s naturally going to ask him about his father. And that’ pretty much going to kill the romance. It’s okay, though: things are going to turn around for her in All-New Spider-Gwen: The Ghost Spider #1. Writer Stephanie Phillips opens a whole new chapter in the life of Gwen Stacy in an issue brought to the page by artist Paolo Villanelli and colorist Matt Milla.
It’s a complicated situation with Fabian. His father’s in prison. He’s still trying to figure things out. Probably not a good idea to ask him to help her regain some sense of her powers after the whole shake-up with the cosmic cube that she had to deal with. Elsewhere in her life, Gwen’s trying to start a band. She’s been passing out flyers looking for people who might want to audition...but that’s a very outdated way of trying to do things, so no one’s showing-up except someone else from the building and fellow web-slinger Cindy Moon, who taught herself to play bass online.
Phillips keeps the central action of the issue away from Gwen. It's an interesting approach for a first issue of a new series, but it makes a lot of sense given all the stuff that she's been through lately. The cosmic level action that she's been going through with all of its weird existential implications seem to have pulled her very far away from her own personality. And her own personal life. So it's cool to see the first issue of a new series with her focus more on her personal life and it doesn't want anything else.
Vilanelli keeps Gwen looking slick and stylish as she glides on the page. The deeper emotional residence of her and her life is channel pretty vividly as well. Layouts tend to be very dynamic with just enough around the edges to suggest Marvel Manhattan without losing a central focus on the main character. The city can end up feeling like an overwhelming character all its own. And it's nice to see an artist find the right kind of balance between the hero and the world that she inhabits. The emotional realities of when in and out of the mask were quite well with clever work by Vilanelli.
The cameo by Silk makes for a fun addition to the series. Phillips is a really good writer. It would be really cool to see her feature silk as a major supporting character who eventually got her own title. It might be getting ahead of things to look that far into the future, but it would be really cool to have a very well rendered female slinger and of the Marvel universe regularly appearing on the comics rack. As it is, Gwen has achieved a kind of equilibrium that seems to be working quite well on the pages of a whole new series.
