Spider-Geddon is an event I can best describe as "Artificial". The threat began artificially and it was dealt with artificially. The story clearly seeks to ape 2015's Spider-Verse but it fails on a lot of different levels. For one thing, the biggest problem seems to be that the stakes are there, but they don't feel nearly as high as before. The Inheritors can't leave 616 and their clone bodies aren't ready to go so they're outright just not as threatening as before. 616 is treated as this vulnerable universe but we all know they're well protected by more than just Spider-Man. In fact, the story only seems to work if you treat it like there are no other Superheroes than Spider-Man. Because my first thought by Issue 3 is "Why is no one calling the Avengers?"
The cast is overall just some survivors from the first war and frankly most of them do very little. Silk, who was a major player in Spider-Verse and Peni Parker, who actually got her own little origin book to explain her role are some of the worst examples because they get maybe 3 lines of dialogue and just melt into the background. Spider-UK and Noir are killed very early, which felt abrupt and Spider-Ham remains a major player for humor purposes, I think.
Oh and there are too many Tie-ins. I'm going to give a short review on each.
Spider-Force: So at some point that we never saw, Ashley Barton, Kaine, Jessica Drew and a new Spider named Spider-Kid get dispatched to defeat Verna, who has her own inter dimensional watch and acquire Solus' crystal. This story is told in a weird way where a lot of information was presented up front and then a lot of characters were introduced just to die very quickly. Oh and Jessica is being strangely selfish by only caring for her own son knowing what she knows of the Inheritors. In the end, they all fail and Solus returns to life so that went nowhere.
Spider-Gwen: Ghost Spider: Tells the tale of Gwen's attempts to return to the main story after being kicked out of the universe by the resurrected Inheritors. It has very little to do with the overall event and mainly just serves to explain what she was up too until she literally walks back in in Spider-Geddon 5. She, much like the audience I'm sure, was very irritable during this story and had little interest in the AU storyline she found herself in.
Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man: Now this storyline I liked because it was Peter fighting Morlun. Very self contained and it did a good job of making both parties look good. Morlun is strong and dangerous, Spider-Man is very quick thinking and that's how he always win. Also it was nice that the event wasn't just relying on 616 Peter to carry the whole thing.
Spider Girls: Literally just a rehash of Anya, Jessica and Silk's mystical storyline from Spider-Verse but with a brand new Totem that they basically made up on the spot as a Deus ex Machina.
Vault of Spiders: A poorly drawn anthology of characters that were not going to do much in the main series. Just "Tales from the Multiverse" kinda thing. None of the Spider-Men were particularly interesting and that leads into probably my second biggest problem.
This story suffers from both having too many and too few characters. Too many because all these different books and storylines make it abundantly clear that the writers had no idea what to do with the Web Warriors. Last time at least the objectives of each splinter group was much more clearly laid out (Cloned Spider's will deal with the cloning facility, Silk and Jessica are going to lead the Inheritors away, Spider-Man 2099 wants to do an autopsy on Deimos and Miles/U. Peter are recruiting more troops) this time objectives go uncompleted and characters that should be prominent are just shunted into the back to stand around while Doc Ock and Miles argue. Too few because, as stated earlier, most of these new guys aren't near as interesting as the ones we saw last time. Oh and it's pretty apparent that there were way fewer Spider-People invited to the final battle.
Another weird problem is that the story seemed to be begging for a convenient cosmic entity to step in and solve the plot. Whether it's the Other or the Enigma Force (Captain Universe). Norman Osborne actually comments on this at one point and gets shut down as if he didn't make a good point. Maybe the Web Warriors should figure something out instead of hoping some magic bullshit falls from the sky?
The ending was very abrupt and left a lot to be desired. Once again the story did everything in it's power to avoid killing the villains and came up with a ridiculous scheme to instead re-raise them as normal people. Which will almost certainly never come up again.
In the end, probably a low point for Spider-Man. Wouldn't reccomend.
An Awful Sequel
Spider-Geddon is an event I can best describe as "Artificial". The threat began artificially and it was dealt with artificially. The story clearly seeks to ape 2015's Spider-Verse but it fails on a lot of different levels. For one thing, the biggest problem seems to be that the stakes are there, but they don't feel nearly as high as before. The Inheritors can't leave 616 and their clone bodies aren't ready to go so they're outright just not as threatening as before. 616 is treated as this vulnerable universe but we all know they're well protected by more than just Spider-Man. In fact, the story only seems to work if you treat it like there are no other Superheroes than Spider-Man. Because my first thought by Issue 3 is "Why is no one calling the Avengers?"
The cast is overall just some survivors from the first war and frankly most of them do very little. Silk, who was a major player in Spider-Verse and Peni Parker, who actually got her own little origin book to explain her role are some of the worst examples because they get maybe 3 lines of dialogue and just melt into the background. Spider-UK and Noir are killed very early, which felt abrupt and Spider-Ham remains a major player for humor purposes, I think.
Oh and there are too many Tie-ins. I'm going to give a short review on each.
Spider-Force: So at some point that we never saw, Ashley Barton, Kaine, Jessica Drew and a new Spider named Spider-Kid get dispatched to defeat Verna, who has her own inter dimensional watch and acquire Solus' crystal. This story is told in a weird way where a lot of information was presented up front and then a lot of characters were introduced just to die very quickly. Oh and Jessica is being strangely selfish by only caring for her own son knowing what she knows of the Inheritors. In the end, they all fail and Solus returns to life so that went nowhere.
Spider-Gwen: Ghost Spider: Tells the tale of Gwen's attempts to return to the main story after being kicked out of the universe by the resurrected Inheritors. It has very little to do with the overall event and mainly just serves to explain what she was up too until she literally walks back in in Spider-Geddon 5. She, much like the audience I'm sure, was very irritable during this story and had little interest in the AU storyline she found herself in.
Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man: Now this storyline I liked because it was Peter fighting Morlun. Very self contained and it did a good job of making both parties look good. Morlun is strong and dangerous, Spider-Man is very quick thinking and that's how he always win. Also it was nice that the event wasn't just relying on 616 Peter to carry the whole thing.
Spider Girls: Literally just a rehash of Anya, Jessica and Silk's mystical storyline from Spider-Verse but with a brand new Totem that they basically made up on the spot as a Deus ex Machina.
Vault of Spiders: A poorly drawn anthology of characters that were not going to do much in the main series. Just "Tales from the Multiverse" kinda thing. None of the Spider-Men were particularly interesting and that leads into probably my second biggest problem.
This story suffers from both having too many and too few characters. Too many because all these different books and storylines make it abundantly clear that the writers had no idea what to do with the Web Warriors. Last time at least the objectives of each splinter group was much more clearly laid out (Cloned Spider's will deal with the cloning facility, Silk and Jessica are going to lead the Inheritors away, Spider-Man 2099 wants to do an autopsy on Deimos and Miles/U. Peter are recruiting more troops) this time objectives go uncompleted and characters that should be prominent are just shunted into the back to stand around while Doc Ock and Miles argue. Too few because, as stated earlier, most of these new guys aren't near as interesting as the ones we saw last time. Oh and it's pretty apparent that there were way fewer Spider-People invited to the final battle.
Another weird problem is that the story seemed to be begging for a convenient cosmic entity to step in and solve the plot. Whether it's the Other or the Enigma Force (Captain Universe). Norman Osborne actually comments on this at one point and gets shut down as if he didn't make a good point. Maybe the Web Warriors should figure something out instead of hoping some magic bullshit falls from the sky?
The ending was very abrupt and left a lot to be desired. Once again the story did everything in it's power to avoid killing the villains and came up with a ridiculous scheme to instead re-raise them as normal people. Which will almost certainly never come up again.
In the end, probably a low point for Spider-Man. Wouldn't reccomend.