• Written by: Taboo, B. Earl
• Art by: Juan Ferreyra
• Colors by: Juan Ferreyra
• Letters by: VC’s Travis Lanham
• Cover art by Rahzzah
• Cover price: $3.99
• Release date: November 23, 2022

Deadly Neighborhood Spider-Man #2 enters into a deadly pact with Demon Bear – enter the Demon Bear’s maze, find him, and defeat him or the world’s nightmares will become real.

Is It Good?

Deadly Neighborhood Spider-Man #2 takes readers on an imaginative ride that blends Native American lore with dimensional rifts and dreams that replace reality. On the positive side, this is a thoroughly inventive Spider-Man story. On the negative side, a general lack of energy drags the reading experience to a crawl.

When last we left Spidey, the famed Demon Bear appeared and attacked Peter and Crystal during their latest experiment. We now know that Crystal didn’t see a thing, and Spidey holds an entire conversation with Demon Bear in his mind. Demon Bear explains the experiment is weakening the barrier between dimensions, somehow causing an influx f dark energy that brings nightmares to life. Demon Bear gives Spidey a test – escape a maze and defeat the Demon Bear, or the world will be destroyed by nightmares.

Again, the setup is imaginative, but it doesn’t work if you think about it for more than two seconds. How does the water experiment weaken the barrier between dimensions? Unknown. How does water-based tech summon dark energy that creates nightmares? Unknown. If Demon bear wants the dimensional barrier from weakening further, why doesn’t it work WITH Spider-man instead of challenging him to a test? Unknown.

The Demon Bear declares the strange stone Spidey finds is the Demon Bear’s heart, and he should use it to find the entrance to the maze. Why is the Demon Bear’s heart infected with dark energy? How is that infection connected to the water experiments? Did any of the writers think this through?

In other words, the picture presented is cool-sh, but Taboo and B. Earl do a poor job of connecting the dots.

The art, also, is cool-ish. Spidey’s design is interesting in a nightmarish/dreamy sort of way, and the coloring is excellent. However, there are a few splash pages where the reading order follows a circle or spiral, and it wasn’t clear which direction you needed to read the panels, so this is a case where the artist sacrificed clarity for creativity in a few spots. In a story where the plot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, the less clarity you lose, the better.

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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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Bits and Pieces

Deadly Neighborhood Spider-Man #2 creates a mystical quest for Spidey to duel the Demon bear. While that sounds interesting, the path to get there is convoluted, poorly explained, and doesn’t always make much sense. The creepy art is a highlight, but a few splash pages get fancy with the panel layout to the detriment of the reading order.

6/10