Here is today's Guest Review from the guys at Spider-Man Crawlspace for Marvel's The Superior Foes of Spider-Man #6. I have also added my rating after each review. If you have any questions about my rating or want to discuss anything just leave me a comment.
The Superior Foes of Spider-Man #6
FOES! FOREVER!
You can't steal the head of Silvermane without severe repercussions - a lesson the Foes are about to learn the hard way!
Don't miss out on the next action-packed chapters of the sleeper hit of Superior Spider-Month!
Preview
Beetle
Plot
Boomerang goes on a date with the cute bartender of a few issues ago and promptly falls in love over a mutual hate of a baseball player. He is not invited up to her apartment. We then get Boomerang’s story of “The True Face of Victor Von Doom” painting, being that Doom hired an artist, but drank too much wine and got emotional, and when the artist captured a tear in the image, said artist was disintegrated and the painting was hidden in the dungeon, then stolen during the Kristoff regime. As the left-behind Foes are being threatened by the Owl (and the Beetle is threatening right back), Boomerang gets a visit from Mach VII who is getting suspicious. And while Boomerang is getting kidnapped by the Chameleon for not delivering Silvermane's head, it turns out Beetle was not making idle threats when her father busts in – none other than Tombstone!
Review
It’s another great issue for the Superior Foes! Or as Steve Lieber says he likes to think of them, the Sinister Several! Or as Boomerang wants to start calling himself since he thinks his gang is dead, the Sinister Singular Individual!
Getting criticism out of the way first (considering it is about the beginning) I found this issue to start surprisingly slow for an issue of Foes. Both on a first read and when looking back at it, devoting the first whole 5 pages to Boomerang’s baseball date with this girl just felt a bit excessive. There was some amusing stuff in there, including a page where Boomerang fantasizes about their life together, but frankly it just didn't feel quite up to the usual hilarity standards of this book to warrant all 5 pages. I think cutting this down to a 3-pager and getting us to the hilarious story of Doom’s painting faster would've really helped to move this thing along. It’s incredibly rare for me to feel like an issue of Foes is dragging, but I definitely felt that at the beginning of this one.
That said, I already mentioned up top that it only took until page 6 for me to laugh out loud. That’s because after those opening 5 pages we got right into Boomerang telling the origin story of the painting, and if you've read any issue with Boomerang narrating a story of what may or may not have happened (Silvermane's head and Mach VII’s history spring directly to mind) you know it is in no way played straight and we get to see some absolutely silly things since this is just Boomerang’s retelling, not the actual word-for-word of what happened. The line that made me glad I wasn't drinking anything to spit out? “I want you to draw Doom…like one of your French girls.” Obviously not something Doom would ever say and Boomerang acknowledges that in the narration…but DAMN FUNNY! We also get to see Doom rolling out of bed in full costume on his upper half and boxers on his lower half. Outright silly fun like this is what this comic does best, and it’s one of the only comics out there that can really pull it off. This scene made the issue for me! Major props to Lieber for the grinning spiders in Doom’s dungeon and the insane journey the painting took from the dungeon to Boomerang.
Then we get a real payoff to last issue’s opening scene, which you may remember featured the Owl being a scary bastard with someone who stole from him tied up and at his mercy. So when we see Beetle, Overdrive, and Speed Demon tied up in Owl’s basement after their heist, we already KNOW how bad this can go. Props to Spencer on the storytelling there. And Shocker fans will also be glad to know that we see Overdrive as the TRUE pansy of the team in this scene. He’ll give up anything and anybody to get out of this alive, even if he doesn't have his legs later! It’s also nice to see the continued characterization of Beetle here. She was a very new character coming into this book and she’s been shaping up to be the most serious member of this team (even if she is seen on her phone most of the time). Her take no crap attitude with Owl is a good extension of that, and it makes sense when we later see who she’s backing that up with!
Images Unplugged Rating
Cover & Solicit - 4
Art, Colors & Inking - 3
Layout & Flow - 3
Story - 4
Verdict - 3.6 (7/10) - (Buy The Superior Foes of Spider-Man) SAVE 10%
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