Spider-Gwen 2 review

The first issue of Spider-Gwen is a fun comic with colourful art, a strong introduction to Gwen Stacey’s alternate Earth and some good dramatic moments to balance it out. It ended with a fight between Gwen and Vulture where he dropped her well above the city, which is quite the cliffhanger when there are no buildings to latch webs onto.

Spider-Gwen 2, written by Jason Latour, is unfortunately a step down from the first issue. It’s still enjoyable at times and her world continues to grow, but it’s not as fun or as balanced. After hitting her head on her landing, she sees visions of Spider-Ham throughout the issue, making all sorts of jokes that start to distract from the drama related to the Mary Janes and the distance between Gwen and her father. Gwen’s scenes are less compelling as a result, even if some of Ham’s jokes are funny. As for the issue’s ending, well … the first issue capped off with Spider-Gwen being dropped. This issue’s ending is very underwhelming by comparison.

The rest of the issue fares much stronger when it shows Frank Castle in his cop days, taking over the Spider-Woman investigation and threatening criminals. Daredevil shows himself as a threat in his own right as the Kingpin’s personal lawyer, leaning towards being a supervillain himself.

Although the comic itself is a step down, Robbi Rodriguez’s art is still great. Gwen appears appropriately tired and dizzy after her head injury. There’s a lot of attention to detail in the backgrounds, whether it’s the messy apartment with posters, random dishes lying around and the game console sitting on the floor. The environmental detail continues outside with advertisements for local bands posted on the sides of buildings and graffiti. While this issue doesn’t have much action, what is there flows well. Best of all, the art is always bright and colourful.

If you enjoyed the first issue of Spider-Gwen, this is still worth picking up. That said, this issue makes me a bit worried about this series. Hopefully this isn’t a sign of things to come, because Spider-Gwen has a lot of potential.