Review by Everest
Story:
Art:
Written by Fiona Avery
Pencils by Mark Brooks
Inks by Jaime Mendoza & Victor Olazaba
Letters by Russ Wooton
Published by Marvel
Price: $2.99
My Verdict: Ground Floor, going up!
The premise: Long ago, in the pages of Amazing Fantasy #15, one of the world’s greatest superheroes appeared for the first time: Spider-Man. Recognizing the character’s instant popularity, Amazing Fantasy was canceled and Amazing Spider-Man was born. All these years, the Amazing Fantasy title, forever associated with the world’s favorite wall-crawler, lay dormant, waiting for the right character to step out and claim it. That character is Arañita (Little Spider)--though she prefers to be called Anya--advertised as the world’s first Hispanic character to star in her own mainstream book. Anya is smart, determined, and too stubborn for her own good. She gets in trouble on the first day of school, obviously not a new occurrence, and she’s got some teenage rebellion issues with her hardworking newspaper journalist father (another nod to Daily Bugle photographer Peter Parker), but we’ll get to that later.
The comic starts mysteriously enough, with a strange, mystically powerful guy wandering around the city, being followed by a scheming punk. What’s his story? We’ll find that out in later issues apparently.
Cut to a local New York high school where we finally meet our feisty heroine, standing up for her friend (who is about to be pummeled by some jock). Her way of standing up for her friend is, basically, to agree to fight the aforementioned jock later that evening (after their fight is cut short there at the school--Anya wastes no time--this is also where she gets into trouble).
At this point, things get strange. We jump back to the mysterious stranger from the beginning of the book as he sits in the middle of a park later that night, performing some sort of ritual. A group of very unusual (and well dressed) thugs with a weird insect fashion motif, led by a woman who is slightly creepy--all somehow connected to the ritual the stranger is performing--show up to put an end to him. As their fight escalates, one of the bad guys breaks their ritualistic rules of combat and there’s a weird explosion of mystical energy. Anya, on her way to the park to fight the jock, gets caught up in the battle royale and, presumably, this is where she gets whatever powers she’s going to end up with. What comes next? You’ve got to wait until the next issue to find out! AAARRGGGHH!!!
The Writing: Fiona Avery is teasing us with this first issue. It’s all build up. By the time the issue has come to a close, all we know for sure is that there’s an awful lot going on and some of it reeks of Dr. Strange. It’s hard to judge this book as a stand-alone issue, because there’s just not enough there yet. However, Avery, a protégé of J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5, Midnight Nation), has delivered the goods before on a little known but excellent limited series called No Honor, and she’s got the right ingredients here to really make her mark in the comics industry. Marvel has an extremely small but fervently passionate fan base for their current Spider-Girl book. Avery appears to be trying a different approach in creating a new Spider-Girl here in the pages of Amazing Fantasy, no doubt with the goal of generating an enormous fan base for this new character, and, if my reaction is any indication, it’s working!
The Art: Where did Mark Brooks come from?! His pencils are nothing short of, well, Amazing! He will be a large part of the success of this book; he’s got a dynamic, fluid style that springs to life and jumps right off the page. His figures are clean and clear, yet with a palpable energy that almost animates each panel. There is definitely some Mark Bagley (Ultimate Spider-Man) influence here, but he is by no means aping Bagley’s style. Mark Brooks, if we’re lucky, is going to be around the comics world for a long, long time. The inking is a perfect complement to the pencils, and the colors are absolutely vibrant. Fantastic stuff!
To Sum Up: At this point, I can’t say the story is fantastic--it’s all been exposition so far--but I can say that I definitely want to read the next issue. The plot has piqued my curiosity and the art work is, again, brilliant. Take a look at the incredible cover of issue #1--now flip it upside down and look at which direction the buildings are coming from. Absolutely amazing!
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