Writer: Christos Gage
Art: Juan Ferreyra, Dave Rapoza, Juan Gedeon, Brian Reber, and VC’s Joe Sabino
Price: $3.99
Release Date: February 5th, 2020
Spider-Verse #5 brings back the fan-favorite Spider-man Noir, and let me tell you Christos Gage nails the noir subtitle. Juan Ferreyra draws panels that further underline the noir elements. It has that 30s post-depression gangster era.
Christos Gage manages to juxtapose what would be a hokey old-timey dialogue with the insertion of Miles Morales. And of course with it being a noir setting, not only are their gangsters, but there are also Nazis, which of course leads to Indiana Jones references.
All of this made for a very happy time reading this book. The narrative zips along with the current of Miles venom blasts, and that’s great. No really, it is, it stops things getting stale and this being a rehash of other Spider-Verse crossover stories.
And the highlight of the book for me is Juan Ferreyra’s artwork. It has lots of black, lots of depth, lots of suggestions through the highlight, and lots of lighting with sharp contrast. I’ve made the comparison to Bruce Timm and Paul Dini’s Batman animation before, and again it comes to mind along with early Spawn.
There is a real moodiness to the panels here that make the Spider-God downright menacing. The use of Swarm in this style was truly unsettling in the best possible way.
Final Thoughts
There needs to be more books like this in my opinion. The hero out of their timeline is entertaining as hell. There is a reason time travel stories are so popular dammit! And to top it off by adding in-universe hopping too and the opportunity for shenanigans are aplenty. I can’t wait to see how Miles’ little Quantum Leap resolves itself. Will we see the return of Peter Porker to the Spider-verse? Will Spider-Ma’am bake more pies? Why do we have to wait a month? That’s basically the only downside to this in my opinion.
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