The Second Best There Is: Scarlet Spider #4 Review

Okay, I finally get it. Scarlet Spider is for people who want to buy both Spider-Man and Wolverine, but only have three bucks a month to throw around.

Make no mistake: this isn’t me screeching that Scarlet Spider is a bad comic book, because it isn’t; it is reasonably well-executed with a decent story, plot, characters, and pretty good art. But in its DNA, this is a book for the rare and nihilistic comics reader who says – presumably while listening to “classic” Limp Bizkit – “You know what would really make Spider-Man an ageless comic book hero? If someone would just write him as a stab-crazed, nearly-remorseless dickhead.”

This issue finds out protagonist being attacked by a bunch of ninjas out for revenge over the fact that, in his past as a lone, non-affiliated killer, he refused to pay allegiance to their clan. The ninjas have a bunch of superpowers, the fight goes public, the hero fights dirty, stuff explodes, dudes get kicked, and a lot of people get maimed in a visceral yet entertaining manner. All of which makes for an exciting comic book, but it makes an exciting Wolverine comic book. All of this feels a little weird when it’s happening with a guy in a Spider-Man suit.

And ultimately, that is the underlying problem that this book continues to face: while it is exciting, well-drawn and generally a fun book, when you boil it down to its elevator pitch, it amounts to: “What if Spider-Man was a real hardassed douchebag?” Which is a fine concept for a one-off or a miniseries, like a DC Elseworlds or an issue of What If?, but it’s not a concept that I think can sustain an ongoing series.

Which is kind of the hell of this book. Because it is an exciting comic book; the fight between Scarlet Spider and the ninjas is pretty damn awesome. The variety of powers he needs to fight runs a pretty wide and interesting gamut, it feels linear, well-choreographed and thought through, and it’s got more action than any ten issues of a Brian Michael Bendis comic.

But part of the impact of the fight comes from the fact that the guy fighting looks like Spider-Man. Which adds a level of visceral shock – seeing Spider-Man chop off a dude’s leg with a sword is going to cause more of a reaction in long-time comics readers than seeing Wolverine do it (again) – but that shock can’t last forever. And it can’t last for a lot of reasons, one of which is that we’ll simply become inured to seeing the costume do these terrible things. Another is internal story-based; writer Chris Yost makes a point of showing Kaine tortured by the violence that he’s done, but that implies that he is on a journey to, you know, stop. If he does? Then this is just another Spider-Man book and has no reason to exist. If he doesn’t? Then we’re going to become tired of seeing someone whining about the awful shit that he just keeps doing. It’ll be like that college buddy who rolls in every month just after payday, drinks all your good bourbon, yacks on the cat, and then cries about how he’s a bad friend. You know that guy. I am that guy. But I digress.

The art by Ryan Stegman still is a big selling point for this book for me. His figures are superhero-realistic (Meaning that everyone looks like they work out for six hours a day on diets of skinless chicken and broccoli, but not like they’ve had horse testosterone and Brazilian fetal tissue shot into their delts), while his faces have somewhat of a cartoony look to them. His action is extremely fluid and dynamic – again, the major battle is logical, easy to follow and damned exciting to read – and he’s got a panel of Scarlet Spider taking a bullet to the shoulder while simultaneously kicking the gun out of the assailant’s hand that I might try to buy at SDCC. The only complaint I have is Stegman’s eyebrows (that is, the ones he draws. I can’t personally address Stegman’s own eyebrows); I don’t know Stegman’s page rate, but I hope it’s top shelf, because he must spend an inordinate amount of money on ink for eyebrows (that is, for drawing eyebrows. I can’t address Stegman’s own eyebrows, and whether or not he dyes them).

It occurs to me that I’ve spent most of this review addressing the problems and thorny bits behind the concept of Scarlet Spider, and not this individual issue. The trouble is that this kind of background stuff is going to be prevalent in a book about a Spider-Man analogue; the best-executed story about a tortured and violent protagonist is going to work on its own weird and unique frequency when that protagonist is wearing a Spider-Man costume. And while this is an exciting and pretty damn fun comic book, it is, in my eyes, always going to be judged on the basis of the costume and what it implies. So in short, if you like the idea of a Spider-Man who is a violent and tortured killing machine, then you’ve found your book.