Since I started looking at comics again, I kept seeing recommendations everywhere I turned for something somewhat improbably called Spider-Gwen. It was supposed to be funny and charming and sort of generally un-modern-superhero-comics-like. So when I got a couple of "hey, take a free graphic novel for your Kindle, go on then" tokens from Amazon for... something, I'm not sure what... I thought OK, fine, I'll pick up the first compilation and see what all the fuss is about.

And I... can't really tell, unless it's just that the people writing those reviews are so numb to what modern superhero comics have become that it really seems to them like Spider-Gwen is in some way unlike that. I mean, Gwen herself is funny and charming and all the rest, but the setting she inhabits is so toxic it makes Marvel's old Ultimate universe (remember that one? the one where Captain America once beat the shit out of an unarmed man for kicks and Hank Pym had his ant friends murder his battered wife for him? yeah, that one) seem kind of safe and restful. Even her origin story is like someone looked at the original Spider-Man origin and thought, How can we make this crueler? In her world, based on both what appears on-page and what's implied, it seems like basically everyone who isn't either Gwen or a civilian is a villain. The guy who spends all his time robbing convenience stores is the most likeable member of the supporting cast. At least he's just trying to make a living.

What the hell is this world I have agèd into?

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.