- Written by: Dan Slott
- Art by: Paco Medina, Ty Templeton
- Colors by: Erick Arciniega, Dee Cunniffe
- Letters by: VC’s Joe Caramagna
- Cover art by: Humberto Ramos (cover A)
- Cover price: $5.99
- Release date: November 1, 2023
Spider-Boy #1 finds Bailey, aka Spider-Boy, acclimating to life as Spider-Man’s sidekick after everyone forgot he existed.
Is Spider-Boy #1 Good?
Spider-Boy #1 is okay, I guess. Dan Slott’s latest comic adventure gives the latest Spider-spinoff character plenty of action and hijinks for the attention-deficient and begins building out Bailey’s backstory. Will this issue win over Spider-Boy skeptics? Probably not, but you have to start somewhere after Bailey’s excruciatingly forced introduction during Edge of Spiderverse.
When last we left Bailey in Spider-Man #11, he managed to convince Spider-Man to take him on as a sidekick (again?) with the understanding that Bailey would be safer with Spidey than getting into trouble on his own. Now, Bailey and Spidey battle a bowling-themed villain named Gutterball, talk about good PR, navigate the haters, and eventually pit Bailey against a fellow lab rat who doesn’t remember Bailey and whose name is a bad Dad joke.
If it wasn’t clear by now, Dan Slott is leading hard into the younger age demographic of readers. It’s unclear if very young readers will get the jokes or the complexities of Bailey’s circumstance (you have to be up-to-speed on Edge of Spiderverse to know where Bailey came from), so this issue feels like it has its identity wires crossed. Stories that appeal to the young and old have to work on multiple levels, but this issue feels like it’s trying to blend all the levels without successfully working on any of them.
What’s great about Spider-Boy #1? More information about Bailey is good. He isn’t necessarily a likable or endearing character (yet), but at least we’re getting more pieces of the bigger picture. The action is solid, and hats off to Slott for creating some original villains, even if they are ridiculous.
What’s not so great about Spider-Boy#1? The comic doesn’t know what it wants to be. Slott contextualized Bailey’s entire existence around comics geared for teens and adults, but he’s writing a story that’s thematically and tonally consistent with a Scholastic book. The net result feels like a comic designed to appeal to everybody but ultimately fails at appealing to anybody. Further, most of Slott’s jokes are terrible.
How’s the art? Medina’s art is great. The line work is perfect, the action choreography is solid, and Arciniega’s colors are excellent.
Backup story
Presumably to justify the outrageous cover price, Slott also wrote a backup story teaming Bailey up with Squirrel Girl to stop a villain who can only breathe Helium and creates destructive balloons to do his bidding.
The story gets even sillier and more childish than the main story but taken as a whole, it reads like a story an elementary reader would like. Templeton’s art is fine, although he struggles with keeping character sizes consistent.
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
Spider-Boy #1 is a serviceable solo offering to get readers on board with the latest Spider-Man spinoff character. Slott’s main story suffers from an identity crisis because it’s a kids’ story written in an adult context, so it tries to please everyone without appealing fully to anyone. Ironically, the exorbitant cover price is justified by a backup story (also by Slott) that looks and feels like it could work for little kids.
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