Deadly Neighborhood Spider-Man [Marvel Comics, 2022]

Deadly Neighborhood Spider-Man

by

Taboo, B. Earl, Juan Ferreyra (Artist), Travis Lanham (Letterer)

This 5 issue mini-series written by Taboo (of the Black Eyed Peas)and B. Earl is definitely a bit of a departure from the usual Spidey tale. I don’t know these writers or anything about them or any previous work and I went into this with no expectations or even any idea what the premise was, intending to just read it and see what it happens.

The story and artwork are both well outside the standard Marvel mould and definitely bring a unique character and style to the experience and for that I’m grateful as it made it more interesting to make my way through.

The story itself is a dream-world-esque story with Peter Parker who is apparently living in L.A in an effort to get some distance from his web-swinging alter-egos’ life and also to work on some mumbo-jumbo project using water and sound-waves to heal sick people and he and his scientific partner in crime, Crystal, unwittingly unleash something from an alternate dimension – a Demon Bear to be precise. In that it is quite reminiscent of many a sci-fi/fantasy horror story that will be familiar to many readers/movie viewers and the Native American-y material it draws from is also not the most unique. But the writing is handled well enough, though I will note that the first issue was a bit rough and I nearly dropped the series there – but it did get more cohesive, coherent and better from there, though only somewhat.

There is very nice use of symbolism and philosophical and mythological concepts that make for some nice reading though it is way more fun from the artwork angle where Juan Ferreyra really gets to shine and bring some great page arrangements and visuals to life. The story is fairly serviceable with the only notably good thing being the way the jumps between reality and dream-worlds is handled as well as the choice to keep the cast extremely tight in terms of who gets space on the pages as it keeps the story crisply moving. More people, more chatter and forcing bigger roles on some of them instead of the extreme Spidey-focus would have in my view diluted the pace as well as the interesting ideas they were trying to explore.

Diving head first into an unknown story can be interesting or terrible and in this instance I suppose I got lucky. The bottom line is that the story itself is pretty average and benefits greatly from having chosen some less conventional folk-lore to draw from and from some talented artists – but overall this could have been a story with a number of different heroes instead of Spider-Man. As a story, it’s fine. As a Spider-Man story, it’s nothing special.

While I commend the creative team for trying something a bit different, the question at the end here is would I recommend it? If you want a nice, quick read that’s nicely drawn, go for it. But there are better out there.



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