Superior Spider-Man 22
Slott and Gage (w) and Ramos and Olazaba (a) and Delgado (c)
Flash Thompson is back in New York and on the trail of someone going by the name Crime Master, who he had recently fought in his own series and had rather brought his life to something of a stand-still. Meanwhile, Parker Industries has opened its doors and started work. Peter gives his first speech to the scientists (it's practically got super-villain written all over it) and meets with his Aunt May and Uncle Jay to show them around. He's called away from the offices (and from Anna Maria) by his Spider-Army, who alert him to Venom and Crime Master's fight. Venom has figured out that Crime Master isn't Betty Brant's brother, the most recent Crime Master, but some former Maggia guy who bought the name off of Hobgoblin and currently regrets it. Venom pretty easily takes this new Crime Master down a peg and the villain gives up when Spider-Man appears with a small battalion. But he's not there for Crime Master; he's there for Venom. Venom realizes that Spidey probably doesn't realize Venom's a good guy now and eventually is forced to show his face, revealing himself as Flash and hoping that's enough for Spidey but ultimately, this Spider-Man doesn't have any connection to the man and seems poised to kill anyway.
Pretty smooth issue, moves a little bit more quickly than the last handful of SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN issues have and sets us up in a lot of different ways. We're no longer in the Parker Industries funding stages, nor in the doctorate-earning stages so we're able to move a little more efficiently through Doc Ock's newest plans. There's a nice character-defining line from Anna Maria as she points to Peter as someone who's quick to action, someone who goes out and does what he wants done and who takes what he wants taken. It's hard not to see that in stark contrast to OG Peter Parker who was constantly second-guessing himself and doubting himself on top of the difference in action vs. reaction we've talked about a lot in other reviews. There's also some more plot-building stuff than was highlighted above as Wraith discovers that Carlie's disappeared and her apartment's been ransacked with all of her notes on Peter similarly gone. She blames Spider-Man and vows to play as dirty as she thinks he's playing. Meanwhile, Jameson is sick of being under Spider-Man's thumb and supposedly has a plan to get out from under it. Plenty happening, plenty of groundwork laid for the next set of issues, and plenty of character development through it all. Pretty solid work.
Scarlet Spider 24
Yost and Burnham (w) and Baldeon (a) and Sotomayor (c)
Kaine still blames himself for Donald's injury and all of the guilt and the pressure he's felt from the start has reached its breaking point, leaving him frustrated and angry with himself, ready to throw away the Scarlet Spider persona for good. Both Annabelle and Aracely are firmly on his side but Wally feels differently, particularly after finally looking Kaine up in his police database and finding the laundry list of crimes attributed to him. After a long day of wallowing and being unable to burn his costume (unstable molecules), Kaine returns home to find Annabelle there, ready to make him feel better and taking a different and more sex-filled tact. While Aracely tries to not hear what's happening in the other room, she has another strange vision laced with plenty of ancient Central and South American imagery and claiming that either she has to die or everyone will die and the likes. As those events both wrap up, all hell breaks loose as Wally comes in to arrest Kaine, the real Annabelle shows up alongside a rocket-launcher-toting Zoe Walsh (unstable daughter of a Roxxon CEO who blames Scarlet Spider for his death but also has a thing for him from back in SCARLET SPIDER 7 or so), and the revealed-to-be-fake Annabelle transforms into a horrifying monster thing we've probably seen before but I don't remember off-hand. Amidst the chaos, Zoe fires her rocket, exploding the penthouse.
The final issue of Scarlet Spider, issue 25, is just around the corner and it shows here as the rising action really speeds to a climax here, bringing everyone who might want to have at Kaine together at once and then firing a rocket-launcher into the room. For all of its last-second action, sudden characters, and confusion, the issue does a really good job sticking to the themes of the book and getting right to the core of everything Kaine's been going through, perfectly summed up by the critical injury to Donald (WAIT, if Wally and Donald got married, would Wally become
Walter Meland because that just came to me and I'll never be happy again if I don't decide that's what's going to happen). He's been going through a lot of this kind of reformed villain stress from the first moment of this book, where he didn't intend to be a hero or to stop in Houston and he can't help thinking about how much better everyone would be if he had stopped, unable to even consider that that wouldn't be true because Houston would have blown up like, ages ago if he wasn't there. A lot of really good stuff and the book develops in such a way that Yost and Burnham really get to explore that stuff before turning the jets on ramping up the action, which also has the added benefit of making the action seem incredibly chaotic and shocking the audience with how quickly it moves. Good stuff, looking forward to the final issue though also pretty sad that it's about to be over.
Superior Carnage 5
Shinick (w) and Segovia, Crisostomo, Ho, and Mexia (a) and JD Ramos and Lokus (c)
Klaw has been killed but it doesn't stop him from being our narrator for the issue. As a being made of pure sound, his death has transferred his consciousness and his abilities into the sound wall, making him a part of everything but with the knowledge that he'll continue dispersing, soon to lose his consciousness in the sounds. For now, though, he watches as Carnage runs rampant in his friend the Wizard's body. He outmatches Spider-Man and knows his secrets, he bests all of Spider-Man's men, he rips the legs from Malus, and he still demands to see his son. One of Spider-Man's men reveals that he's there and eventually Spider-Man is forced to play his trump card. To the Wizard's surprise, it's not Bentley-23 on-site but rather the "son" of Carnage, Cletus Kasady. Klaw explains that he's realized over time that Carnage feels the sort of betrayal a teenager feels, passed around from host to host, wanting to separate from everyone while maintaining some sort of link to someone. However, he adjusts it to include the fact that it's Carnage who has left his hosts behind, evolving and changing, but that he longs for someone he can fully control, someone designed especially for him, and that perfect host then is Kasady. Carnage rips itself off of Wizard and makes its way to Kasady as Spider-Man and his men use a specially designed gun to try to contain him. They can't get it running in time but Klaw uses his remaining power from the sound wall to project unbridled sound at the reunited Kasady and Carnage, allowing Spider-Man the chance to contain him. The book ends with the reveal that Wizard's dementia has stopped and, for all intents and purposes, he's doing better than before now that Carnage has seemingly fixed his mind to an extent; that Cletus Kasady's mind has been similarly fixed from his short time with Carnage, fixed enough at least to wake him out of his coma if not to make him less crazy; and that Spider-Man has Carnage under his control for now.
Solid ending to what turned out to be a pretty compelling and well executed story. I wasn't terribly optimistic at the start after the first issue didn't exactly win me over but Shinick had a story that was pretty good and clearly wanted to play with a couple of characters in unexpected ways, showing Wizard as a broken man who wants nothing more than to impress his son, showing Klaw as an extremely loyal and very capable villain right up to the end, and showing Carnage in probably the most complex light it's ever been cast in. Instead of a somewhat mindless and blood-thirsty beast, Carnage has a whole range of purported emotions that have left it an efficient and extremely calculating killer. There's a lot of really good stuff to this and the Carnage bent, not entirely unlike the Deadpool-based but rather silly series (like DEADPOOL KILLS THE MARVEL UNIVERSE, DEADPOOL KILLUSTRATED, and DEADPOOL KILLS DEADPOOL), aims to continue, albeit with less of a silly tone than the Deadpool books and more of a "oh dear god why is this happening tone," with the next Carnage-based series (following up CARNAGE, CARNAGE USA, and now SUPERIOR CARNAGE) revealed as CARNAGE HOMECOMING. Get ready for a lot more Cletus Kasady.
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