Written by: Cody Ziglar
Art by: Justin Mason
Colors by: Jim Charalampidis
Letters by: VC’s Travis Lanham
Cover art by: Takashi Okazaki, Rico Renzi
Cover price: $3.99
Release date: July 13, 2022
Spider-Punk #3 takes the Spider-Band on an unexpected pit stop when they encounter a surly group of Marauders near Philadelphia. Short on parts, the local hero, Daredevil, offers to help the band steal what they need from a greedy night-club-promoter-turned-gangster named Kingpin.
Is It Good?
There is nothing remotely punk, engaging, exciting, or entertaining about Spider-Punk #3. It’s the equivalent of sitting through the Junior High School production of a superhero stage play, put together with bargain-basement sets and costumes assembled from odds and ends stolen from a local Good Will, written by the school’s remedial English class as a pass/fail project.
The Spider-Band gets attacked by Marauders (Dakan, Sunfire, Armor) near Philadelphia on their trip to Washington D.C. Short on parts and cash, Mattea Murdock, an old friend of Ms. Marvel, arrives to lend a hand by suggesting a plan to rob Kingpin. The group splits up (one half to protect the van, the other half to rob Kingpin’s HQ) in a simple plan to beat up the guards, the Marauders, and Kingpin to take what they want.
That’s it. In effect, this issue serves no purpose but to introduce the “punk” versions of Daredevil, Kingpin, and the Marauders. You don’t get any sense of drama, charm, tension, or excitement. The few jokes present don’t work, there are no clever twists to the derivative characters, and the entire conflict is resolved simply by beating Kingpin up within three panels.
Credit to Ziglar for finding one cool twist by having Daredevil (a drummer, of course) use drumstick tapping to generate sound echoes that create a radar map of the building. If Ziglar would create more music-themed twists as with Daredevil, this issue and the series would be much more enjoyable.
The art looks like something you’d see out of an underground indie comic. That could be intentional in keeping with the punk theme, but there’s no way to know for sure. If an underground indie style is not your thing, you may be off-put by the visuals.
About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.
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Final Thoughts:
Spider-Punk #3 sends the Spider-Band on a side trip (literally) to Philadelphia when the Spider-Van is attacked by the Marauders, resulting in a story that’s wholly absent of creativity, style, charm, humor, or imagination. The serviceable art gets the job done, but there’s nothing punk about this comic in either the writing or the art.
Weird Science Marvel Comics 