Ben Reilly: The Scarlet Spider #22 Review

Ben Reilly: The Scarlet Spider #22

Writer: Peter David

Artist: Will Sliney

Color Artist: Rachelle Rosenberg

Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagna

Cover Artists: Khary Randolph & Emilio Lopez

Assistant Editors: Lauren Amaro

Editor: Devin Lewis

Executive Editor: Nick Lowe

Editor in Chief: C. B. Cebulski

Chief Creative Officer: Joe Quesada

President: Dan Buckley

Executive Producer: Alan Fine

“Doubtful. Likely he just wanted to chew on you a little.” — Nakano

The Story: Okay, so this was a weird one. Yes, weird even for a world with clones, pterodactyl men, and demons running around. Let’s see… Kaine and Ben both make their way to 61 Silver Street. Kaine makes it first, having followed a military vehicle that he had been tailing. Inside he’s greeted by a giant two-headed dog named Bithron who tries to eat him.

After putting the dog (dogs?) down for a nap, Kaine discovers a room that smells of cotton candy from Coney Island, which stems from a memory Peter Parker had of his youth. The room is white and filled with people from throughout history (business men, Roman soldiers, pilgrims, etc.) on headsets granting or denying some sort of requests.

Bithron wakes up, and the fight begins again with no one in the room batting an eye, despite the destruction occurring around them. Kaine knocks the slobbering menace out again, only to be greeted by Nakano and her naginata (Kaine, much like myself, just thought it was a fancy spear; guess we were wrong, whoops). Turns out her weapon of choice was poisoned and Kaine is soon unconscious. Before passing out, Kaine accuses her of cheating; her honor insulted, she’s ready to kill him until a man all in white shows up and insists she lets him live. Weird, right? Trust me, it only gets weirder…

Ben arrives in a taxi and, after politely knocking, is greeted by Jezebel (remember the weird little girl with weird powers? Yep, that’s the one). While trying to get answers out of her, Ben is greeted by the same man in white from earlier. Turns out his name is Gabriel and he’s an angel, or so he claims.

Gabriel gives Ben a tube of his blood, telling him to inject Abigail with it in order to cure her. Ben is then told to take Kaine with him, who was tried up in a closet.  The Spidey clones are then teleported into Ben’s taxi from earlier and the driver, momentarily distracted by their sudden appearance, crashes into a pole.

The Good: Well, Will Sliney does another great job on the art, however, that second to last panel with the taxi hitting a pole was… a little hard to figure out at first, at least for me. But other than that panel, everything else looks great. Peter David does a nice job on the dialogue here, too.

The Bad: Still not digging these covers. They’re just not doing it for me, and this one is pretty irrelevant to the story, too. It’s misleading. The plot on this issue was… not good. Wayyyyy too much weirdness thrown at us from out of nowhere with little to no build up. An angel? What? Two-headed dog? A vial of blood? The Heaven angle seems especially odd, but I guess the focus on saving Ben’s soul is going to become the main focus now with the book nearing its conclusion, so maybe things are being rushed? I’m not certain, but I do hope next issue will further explore everything that was just thrown at us.

Uhhh… I’m giving this issue a 5/10 naginatas. Not a terrible issue, but not a particularly great issue, either. This would definitely not be the issue you hand to someone to convince them to try the book out, nor would you want it to be their first comic, either. I hope things pick up again for the book to end on a really high note.