In Marvel's November solicits, this week, it was revealed that issue #17 of Nick Spencer's and Steve Lieber's SUPERIOR FOES OF SPIDER-MAN would come to an end. The solicit revealed that "This is it! The end! The finale! The big wrapuperoo!!" With it, comes the cover to the final issue, drawn by Lieber, with Rachelle Rosenberg doing the colors. It's important to note that this series wasn't being cut short, according to Nick Spencer's Twitter feed, but there will be no relaunch as well. Issue #17 is it and that's that. It's an end to easily one of the most ingenious Marvel series in the past decade.
Ignoring the most Upworthy-ish title I've ever come up with in my tenure at CV, the end of SUPERIOR FOES sucks. While it took a while to win over some hardcore Spider-man fans, it was the one book you never heard complaints about. Looking at the series as a whole, thus far, it's an easy book to fall in love with. What made SUPERIOR FOES such an awesome series was that it was something unexpected. Who knew that a book about a group of D-list Spider-Man villains could be so enjoyable?
Following in the footsteps, to a degree, of other books at Marvel like Matt Fraction's HAWKEYE, SUPERIOR FOES had an off-beat comedic style and an approach to storytelling that was far different than other team books. As Spencer and Lieber got further down the road with this book, there was a real connection between the readers and the series. It was one of those books you read not just for the story but because you wanted to see how Lieber and Spencer approached it.
By the way I'm talking about this, you may think this is the second coming of comics. In some cases, it kind of is, even though that may be seen as a giant exaggeration. It was a very different approach to comic book story telling, and it used humor not just for the laughs but to give readers a closer look at who these characters are whether it was Boomerang's thought process and daydreaming, which in many times him murdering some one or Overdrive's escape plan, in a two page which was just as silly as it was important to the story. It was the perfect look at some villains who were a bit dated.
It's not the end of the world, but it's a big bummer for fans. SUPERIOR FOES OF SPIDER-MAN was a great break from the endless events, tie-ins, and overall serious approach to comic book storytelling most series have. It was the delicious desert after a nice meal, but a desert I could go back to and overeat until I explode. Luckily, not all is lost. There's still three more issues of this series to enjoy. Thanks Nick Spencer, Steve Lieber, and Rachelle Rosenberg for giving readers a team book that stood out from everything else, and thanks for putting the head of Silvermane in a remote control car and later in a bowling bag.
61 Comments