Superior Spider-man Team-Up #4

Superior Spider-man Team-Up #4

"Infinity"

Story: Robert Rodi
Penciler/Inker: Michael del Mundo
Colourists: Michael Del Mundo and Marco D'Alfonso
Letter: Joe Caramagna
Cover: Paolo Rivera and Joe Rivera


The Superior Spider-man continues to battle the invading forces of Thanos while trying to stop Fulmina from wiping out power across the city.  Is this issue lights out?  Hit the jump to find out!


Summary:  Picking up from last issue, Fulmina (aka college student Sylvia) is causing a city-wide blackout during an invasion from the forces of Thanos.  Spider-man is racing across the city to his lab, stopping occasionally to thwart looters, invading aliens, and help fix a generator at a crowded hospital.  All the while Fulmina is communicating with him over his headset, promising to restore the world to how it was before technology took over as Spider-man attempts to reason with her.  Upon arriving at his lab, Otto uses the machine that wiped out Peter Parker from his brain to bring Fulmina in.  She appears as Sylvia, and Spider-man tries to convince her that the past was not as glorious as she seems to think it was by showing her images of war and pestilence.  Unmoved, and realizing she can manipulate things in this place, she returns to her Fulmina appearance and threatens to kill Spider-man.  At this time, Spider-man receives an emergency alert from one of his Spider-bots about an alien ship wrecking havoc across New York.  Spider-man is finally able to convince Fulmina that her powers should be used to help ensure human survival, and not wiping out everything humans have created.  She then sacrifices herself to destroy the alien craft while restoring power to the city, as a proud Spider-man watches on.

The good:  This issue is an improvement over the last issue in several way.  For starters, it is less bogged down by being a tie-in and actually incorporates the alien invasion in a way that makes sense when Fulmina sacrifices herself at the end of the story.  The issue also focuses more on the Fulmina story and less on the events going on in "Infinity", which is what the first part of this story lacked.  Rodi did a much better job writing Spider-man/Otto in this issue, he felt less schizophrenic and his transitions from his more villainous behavior and his heroic behavior were much more smooth.  The story itself was a little predictable but overall satisfying.  Rodi incorporated some really great moments, such as Otto admitting to Fulmina he knows how it feels to "use your powers to make yourself a tyrant" and Otto questioning what is wrong with himself after he stops to help at the hospital when stopping Fulmina should be his priority.  Superior Spider-man stories are at their best when writers can capture the conflict and occasional remorse Otto struggles with as he attempts to be a hero, and Rodi really nails that with those scenes.  At the same time, Rodi shows that Otto is still has some of his bad qualities as he never shows remorse about killing Peter Parker and actually chastises himself for quipping and sounding very "Parker-ish".  The end of this issue, while predictable, is very well done.  It seemed fairly obvious that Fulmina would sacrifice herself to help stop the ship destroying New York, but the way Rodi wrote Otto's reaction to this was another example of the hero-villain mash up done right.  Otto is admittedly proud of Fulmina for her actions and even refers to her as his prodigy, but at the same time, he shows very little sympathy or remorse over her passing and even takes some of the credit by claiming he gave her to the world.  Finally, del
Mundo's delivered some absolutely stunning images in this issue.  In particular, the panels that incorporated the full moon shining over a dark city were gorgeous and the panels where Spider-man shows Fulmina the death and destruction of the past are a nice mix of creepy and pretty.

The not so good:  Unfortunately del Mundo didn't deliver great art in every panel of this issue, as the art was a little inconsistent this time.  There were several scenes where people's facial expressions were weirdly distorted, especially Luke Cage when he is talking to Spider-man.  This was even more noticeable when compared to the really great work del Mundo did on with the rest of the issue.  Also, this story really could have been told in one issue.  I'm sure this was a mandate from the editors and does not reflect on Rodi himself, but a lot of the "Infinity" parts of the story could have been cut and the focus could have been more on the Fulmina story with the invasion going on in the background.  this issue improved on this compared to the last, but when all is said an done this story seems to have taken up more pages than it should have.  Overall, it was a slightly above average issue that resolved the Fulmina story while actually tying in to the event.

Overall rating: B- (8.0/10)

Ads:

The  first ad from this issue is a Harley Davison one on the back cover.  Just about all of the Marvel books have Harley Davidson ads on them, which seems like an odd team up and it has actually been going on for a while now.  The second ad is for some of the cool Marvel stuff you can get at New York Comic Con, which I wish I could go to.