Gwenpool #4 // Review
Waking-up can be an awful experience for anyone. Waking-up from the dead? Yeah: that’s going to be traumatic. Remembering the moment of your death as you rise to consciousness? That’s going to make anyone feel a little upset. For Gwen that meant killing the first person she saw. And given the fact that she was brought back from the dead and given that the person in question was in a lab coat, there was a good possibility that the person in question wasn’t exactly blameless. Some time later, things are a lot more complicated in Gwenpool #4. Writer Cavan Scott continues an interesting mutation of serialized fiction that echoes so much else that’s been going on around the Marvel Universe. Artist Stefano Nesi brings the story to the page with the aid of colorist Matt Milla.
Gwen fetl particularly upset at the guy in chrage of the operation in question. Some time later, she found herself working for that guy. It wasn’t easy. There were riots in the street. Lots of sentiment flowing through them against those with super powers. And they might well have had some reason to be upset: Spider-Man had become possessed by some strange force that caused him to be a monster and the only ones there to help were a couple of young women with nowhere near his amount of experience. Gwen Stacy and Kate Bishop are going to have their hands full on this one.
There is a pleasantly dizzy and kind of meta writing going on with Scott’s script. The postmodernist approach has worked for spider books and the recent past. It’s always interesting to get al look at the way everything has come to tick with respect to Marvel web-slingers. Scott does so with the kind of wit and precision that make for an interesting dual-track tale that involves serious sci-fi adventure with an interesting sort of a criticism on the convoluted nature of the history of Spider-Man and related characters. Scott treads a pretty tight line that could have easily become trite with careless writing.
It's a complex tale of sophisticated drama of that involves a woman who was talking to herself from beyond the grave. There's a lot here that really wouldn't necessarily normally transfer all that well into the visual. However, Nesi is able to capture the strange and surreal idiosyncrasies of this particular interpersonal and a psychological drama with a great deal of subtlety and nuance. Milla’s colors brilliant add mood, deaf, and intensity throughout the issue. The effects of Gwen as ghost might not come across as cool or spectral as they could, but there’s a lot going on here that’s really immersive visually.
It's really difficult to tell a story that involves a summing-up of convoluted plot elements from decades ago. It’s always tricky trying to bring some of these characters stories into a universal continuity that includes detailed criticism of where things have been. Scott and company do a pretty good job of telligng an interesting story that involves the full character of Gwen...even if it’s never going to be able to allow a full look at the character in all of her many weird facets.
