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| THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN No. 8, April 2016 |
As multi-issue story conclusions go, Dan Slott’s third
and final part of “The Dark Kingdom” certainly manages to do a nice job of tying-up all of his narrative’s plot threads, and even succeeds in keeping the titular
character’s romance with Lian Tang alive despite “his current girlfriend and
designer of his spider-mobile… working for the terrorist organisation, Zodiac,
in exchange for medical treatments for her dying mother.” But whilst Mister
Negative’s defeat is all well and good, as is Cloak and Dagger’s return to
normality now they’re immune to the villain’s poison, the “Arkham Asylum”
author’s ending arguably must have struck many of this comic’s 71,599 strong audience
as being a little too sickly sweet a finale for the infamously luckless Peter
Parker. Certainly the Web-crawler’s morally righteous speech to his company’s
female “mole” that he’d be a hypocrite “if we didn’t give you a chance to work
with us… [to] take down Zodiac” seems rather conveniently contrived considering she had only
just moments before caused thousands of pounds worth of damage whilst trying to
kill him; “I promise to make this quick. If it helps. This isn’t personal.”
Fortunately, despite such reservations with its script, “Black
& White” still proves to be a genuinely fun and thrilling read, crammed full
of action sequences, such as the Shanghai Police Department’s battle with
Martin Li’s demonic mask wearing minions, and the sort of smart-mouthed humorous
banter that Spidey’s followers have come to expect. Indeed the “friendly
neighbourhood” Web-spinner’s delightful remonstration of his old foe’s
“worst Admiral Ackbar” impersonation ever as the ebony-skinned villain shouts “It’s a trap” in
surprise, must have had the comic’s “Star Wars” fans smiling broadly.
Arguably somewhat less successful, though undoubtedly
competently drawn, is Matteo Buffagni’s rather lifeless artwork. The Scuola Internazionale Di Comics graduate certainly
knows how to pace a script, and does an especially fine job of storyboarding the
hero’s fraught high-rise confrontation with his errant spider-mobile chauffeur, as well Cloak & Dagger's rescue of Quinghao after the “Humanitarian
of the Year” is ordered to jump out of the multi-storey building’s window by
the manipulative mind-controller Mister Negative. Yet sadly none of these
theatrically dramatic occurrences appear particularly animated or even energic, and rather seem perturbingly
two-dimensional despite Marte Gracia’s evident attempt to provide the figures
with some much-needed depth courtesy of the Mexican’s colouring.
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| Writer: Dan Slott, Artist: Matteo Buffagni, and Colorist Artist: Marte Gracia |
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