**** (four of five stars)
Favorite Quote: "My name is Kaine, and I am going to die in this city. I thought I knew what humidity was, but I was wrong. I was so wrong. Houston is Vietnam-level hot. It's like I'm web-swinging through steam. I don't know what to do now. Fight crime, I guess. Man, that sounds stupid." -- Kaine, complaining about web-slinging in the heat and humidity of Houston
Summary
Several months ago, five miles off the coast of Galveston, an oil rig experiences a sudden burst of unexplained energy. When one worker asked what happened, another one hypothesizes that the drill snapped, stating that he told the owners that the pressure was too high for them to be dealing with oil. The two men are suddenly shocked by something that appears on top of the rig structure.
In the present, Kaine is sweltering in the Houston heat. Before he can motivate to fight crime, a rocket strikes a few floors above where he's perched on a building. He manages to avoid "a thousand pounds of flaming steel and concrete" and watches as it descends to the street below him. Noting that he'd "hate to be the poor suckers...down there," he realizes that he has to go save them. He manages to spin a web between two buildings, catching the falling debris, but, before he can celebrate, he realizes that a girl is falling towards him. He catches her and takes her safely to a rooftop where she kisses him. They then sleep together and Kaine observes to her that he doesn't know her name. She reminds him that she doesn't know his, but thanks him for saving her life. Kaine asks what happened at the building and she replies that it was all a blur after she fired the first rocket. At that moment, someone knocks on the door. Kaine is stunned by that revelation and asks if she blew up the building. She says yes (after telling him that her name is Zoe) and says that she thought that he was there for the same reason, because of "Galveston." Kaine puts on his costume and heads out the window while she answers the door draped in a bedsheet.
At the Four Seasons, Kaine keeps telling himself that he's not going to get involved, until Aracely bursts into his room and tells him that she can't sleep with all his "not caring." At 1:00 am, Kaine goes to Zoe's apartment only to find it completely empty; he then notices that a construction crew is already rebuilding the top floor of Roxxon Tower, the building that Zoe attacked. He visits Officer Layton, asking for help. Layton tells him that the media were reporting that the explosion was due to a gas leak and confirms that story through the Houston PD website. Kaine asks about a missile and Layton is stunned by the question. He notes that Roxxon "has been the backbone of Houston for decades," providing countless jobs. Kaine asks about its connection to "Galveston," not knowing what it is.
That next morning, a Roxxon employee named Jacob Johnston makes his way through a bevy of security checkpoints to Floor 28.5. Logging onto his computer, he's surprised by Kaine, who used his stealth suit to break into the building. Threatening Johnston with his spider stinger, he tells him not to call security and asks him to give him all the information that he has on the Galveston explosion. Johnston tells him that he doesn't have access to all that information, since he's just an I.T. guy, and tells Kaine that only the CEO has that sort of access. At that moment, security breaks into the office and the head guard instructs his colleagues to kill both Johnston and Kaine. Evading their machine-gun fire, Kaine manages to lose the guards and asks a stunned secretary where the CEO is; she directs him to the top floor. There, Kaine accuses the CEO of covering up the attack and making a woman disappear. Walsh confirms that he did both, creating the gas-leak story to protect his daughter, who's been emotional since her mother's death. At that moment, Kaine notices Zoe sitting on his couch. Walsh tells Kaine to leave, and a trio of super-powered people appears outside the window, calling themselves the Rangers.
The Review
As you probably noticed, I've decided to start reviewing "Scarlet Spider" in my usual "Amazing Spider-Man" format, a sign that, after only seven issues, Chris Yost is juggling so many plots, sub-plots, and surprises that it requires more than just a few paragraphs to describes everything. If that doesn't tell you that you should be reading this series, I don't know what does.
The Really Good
Yost really knows how to raise the hairs on my arms. I'm thinking in particular about the page where Kaine finds Zoe's apartment completely empty and then observes the hurried construction on the Roxxon Tower, noting to himself that you'd never know, an hour from that moment, that the top floor had exploded the previous day. Yost uses these two moments to set the stage for the coming story, making Kaine (and the reader) realize that everything isn't what it seems. At this point, I really started to feel like I was watching an action movie. It also makes you wonder why Zoe fired the missile.
The Good
1) I love Kaine complaining about the humidity. On one hand, I totally feel him. I hate the heat and I can't imagine swinging around Houston in the summer in spandex. But, Yost also uses the moment to remind us how crotchety Kaine is. Pete would've complained about the heat, sure, but it would've been in some sort of cute, funny way. Instead, Kaine grumbles about it in an annoyed, cranky way, eventually resigning himself to fighting crime in it. Yost continues to portray Kaine as some sort of disgruntled frat boy and I totally, totally dig it.
2) I loved Kaine's conversation with himself about saving the "poor suckers...down there." The "Dammit" at the end continued the theme of his general crankiness. He'll save some people from an exploding building, but he'll be a little annoyed doing it. It's another way that he's different from Pete. Pete would be annoyed, later, when someone that he saved inevitably told him that he was a menace, whereas Kaine would just tell them to go eff themselves.
3) Kaine notes that he had never tried to build the type of web that he does here to save the people from the falling debris. I liked how Yost had him note that, because it reminds us that he's really applying himself, stretching himself in ways that he hasn't done previously. Yost also reminds us of the powers that he knows how to use, like his stealth suit (which he uses to break into Roxxon) and his spider stinger (which he uses to threaten the Roxxon employee).
4) If you need no better reminder that Kaine isn't Peter, it's that he sleeps with a girl he rescues. But, to remind us that they're "brothers," he does seem to have inherited the "Parker luck" when the girl winds up being not only the person who fired the rocket at the Roxxon building in the first place, but also someone who has two fairly large gentleman pounding on her door as she reveals that information to Kaine. "Why is my life like this?" indeed. The fact that she's also the daughter of Roxxon's CEO definitely confirms his Parker heritage.
5) I loved, loved loved Aracelly breaking into Kaine's room demanding that he investigate the rocket incident. Hilarious.
6) Pham has great comedic timing. I loved the scene of the office workers going about their regular day and then, BAM, in the next panel, Kaine and the Roxxon mercenaries suddenly explode into the office suite. It's a great moment and I have high hopes for Pham, despite the occasional roughness of certain moments.
The Unknown
Yost leaves us wanting more here. Why is Roxxon covering up whatever happened in Galveston? In fact, what happened in Galveston? Why would Zoe be motivated by whatever happened in Galveston to fire a missile at Roxxon Towers? Questions, questions, questions. Given that we're going to have the fun distraction with the new super mercenaries, the Rangers, in the next issue, I'm guessing that it's going to be a while before we get answers. But, I'm totally OK with that.
The Bad
Pham does a pretty good job filling Stegman's shoes, but his work in this issue is a little uneven. In fact, I thought that the whole sequence where Kaine wakes up Officer Layton was drawn by a different artist. Hopefully, it's just growing pains, because the art on this series so far has been one of the things that has made it so great.
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