Spider-Verse #2 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Ho boy.  I wish I could say that this issue was high/low, but it's really more mediocre/low.

The Anansi story is the nadir, because it doesn't make a lick of sense.  I read it twice and still have no idea what Immonen was trying to say.  How did Anansi pretending that the tiger stole Mr. Mighty's sheep get him to learn how to take care of them by himself?  How did that lesson (even if it did make sense) serve as a metaphor for Spider-UK and his request that Anansi help him?  What the hell happened at the end with all the baa-ing sheep and the jug?  No idea.

The Mexican Spider-Man story was OK, but it's really only remarkable for the fact that it's in Spanish.  This version of Spider-Man watches his luchador father get killed by another luchador, though we never get any explanation of why he'd want him dead (or how he somehow escaped going to prison for murder).  He rescues a girl here, but, again, we never really learn why she was kidnapped.  Maybe we do, but my Spanish isn't good enough to understand the explanation.  The art is pretty great, but, given how many times we've seen alternate Spidey origin-stories at this point, you've got to do something more than nice art to justify taking up space.

Similarly, the Punk Spider-Man story is OK, but not great.  It's not exactly the Spider-Gwen issue of "Edge of Spider-Verse," where Latour managed to create an entire world in just a few pages.  I'm not saying that it's not creative in its own way.  For example, I liked Mackay re-imaging the Venom symbiote as a type of armor that "President" Osborn created to empower his soldiers to keep order.  Spidey doesn't even actually use his powers in this story; he simply uses his guitar (and a lot of amps) to save the day.  But, it's a fairly contained story that doesn't really hint all that much at a complicated world; we all know a fascist empire when we see one.

Finally, Slott gives us a story involving banter between two Spider-Men, but it's unclear how important it is.  They try to figure out the difference between them, can't, and decide that it's probably a small one.  It seems rife with portent, but, if it is, it's too subtle for me to get.  Instead, it got me thinking about how Slott is pretty much defining "every Spider-Man ever" as every second of every Spider-Man's life creating a different Spider-Man, and it's just too much thinking for a Thursday night.

** (two of five stars)

Spider-Verse #1 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

These event-related short-story collections are always hit-or-miss, but I have to say that this one hits a lot more than it misses.  Skottie Young and Katie Cook's stories are cute, though fairly forgettable.  Although I liked Thompson's steampunk story, the script still suffers from too much clichéd commentary from Lady Reilly about feeling trapped given the limitations on her as a woman in the late 1800s.  It's certainly not untrue, but Thompson doesn't put much effort into making that lament original; in fact, he goes too far the other direction, trying to get us to believe that Reilly somehow managed to get three university degrees despite being a woman.

It's actually the interstitial stories that make this issue.  Morlun finding the Hostess Fruit Pie Spider-Man to be the "greatest snack of all" is one of the funniest things that I've read all year.  Similarly, I LOLed at Morlun leaving daily comic-strip Spidey due to the chronal instability that meant that it takes days to "perform the simplest actions" in that world.  Slott doesn't really have to prove that he's a Spider-Man fan, given the attention to detail that he's exhibited throughout his run.  But, these two sequences really remind you just how well he knows this character.  I'm not sure that they're worth the $4.99 price tag of this issue, but they come close.

*** (three of five stars)