THE BASICS
Chaos erupts inside the Life Foundation's headquarters from all sides and things don't promise to become any more peaceful with the appearance of one of Spider-Man's greatest foes.
MY COMPLIMENTS TO THE CHEF
- This issue was actually pretty entertaining. We get a bit of a break from attempts to weave a complex tale and get to enjoy some fun action scenes. Things aren't going quite as planned for the Lifer's and the myriad of characters are all caught up in fist and firefights, escape attempts, and damage control. It's all rather fun to watch and I was surprised to find myself actually enjoying myself. The fact that this series becomes much more entertaining when it focuses less on its story and more on chaotic action should tell you something about it, but, at this point, I'll take any sign of improvement I can find.
FEEL THE STING OF MY DISCONTENT!
- The fact that it's taken this long to get to this point in the story isn't something to be proud of. Much of the first three issues contain a large amount of unnecessary scenes. I'd be willing to bet that you could trim all the excess off the first three entries and combine what's left into a single issue without losing anything vital. In fact, it would probably improve the series. Instead of wasting so much time, it would have jumped right into the story and things would have moved along much smoother.
- To give examples of the above, what was the purpose of having Spider-Man fight Styx and Stone in issue 1? What relevance to the story did it contain? Also, if we saw the Jury training to take down Venom in the first issue, why are we constantly being reminded on nearly every occasion that that's their purpose? Either show us or tell us. Both aren't needed in this situation. Now, you could fairly say that these are complaints against the first issue in this series, but the weight of these problems are really only felt in this issue, when the story finally gets upright and on the move, and the realization of just how long that's taken to happen hits.
- Perhaps this is just me, but I can't tell one muscle-bound action hero cliche from the next here. There are six of them in this series, at least I think it's six, and I can't really tell who's who here. For one, all of them are pretty much palette swaps of each other, so the only major differences between them are the colors on their uniforms. It doesn't help that they all have generic names like "Ramshot" and "Spoiler". That wouldn't be too much of a problem considering how often these guys say each others names, but most of the time, they're addressing off panel characters, which means I have no idea which Rambo copy they're talking to. It makes things pretty hard to follow.
WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE
An issue that both entertains and brings to even more light the major faults of this series. Still, at least it's an improvement over the previous entries.
