Spectacular Spider-Men #2 Review

Written by: Greg Weisman
Art by: Humberto Ramos, Victor Olazaba
Colors by: Edgar Delgado
Letters by: VC’s Joe Caramagna
Cover art by: Humberto Ramos, Edgar Delgado
Cover price: $3.99
Release date: April 17, 2024

Spectacular Spider-Men #2 gets the Spider Team’s spider senses tingling when they notice one of the coffee shop regulars acting strangely, leading to an underground clash with Vermin and Shift.

Is Spectacular Spider-Men #2 Good?

Somebody find Greg Weisman and take the double-shot espresso out of his hands. Yes, the central setting for this series revolves around Peter and Miles regularly meeting at a coffee shop, but it shouldn’t read like a writer who has been up all night cranking shots of No-Doze and instant coffee.

When last we left Peter and Miles, they’re (not so) humorous attempts at hanging out in the E.S.U. coffee shop quickly turned into a spider adventure when a bulked-up, rampaging Jackal tore through the campus. The issue ended with Jackal in custody, and the rubble of the lab where Jackal escaped from contained a body charred beyond recognition. Between the action and “humor,” readers saw random scenes of random citizens experiencing presumably positive developments in their lives.

Now, we jump from an autopsy scene where Jane Foster (???) is brought in to provide expertise, a pair of lovers finally getting together in the park, a man chased in the sewers by a hissing monster, Miles and Peter enjoying the settled-in atmosphere of their regular coffee shop hangout, Turk running from but ultimately punching out Daredevil, the two lovers from the first scene turning out to not be lovers, the other two lovers in Venice from the first issue enjoying time together, the dejected lover from this scene going to someplace called Arcadium while the Spider-Men follow, a battle with a group of Vermin in the sewers, a lecture from one Spider-Man to the other about the use of patriarchal language, Shift arriving to break up the fight between Spider-Men and Vermin, and a shady character looking for college volunteers to beta test a game for Arcadium.

Spectacular Spider-Men #2 Video Review

wheeze wheeze wheeze And then… Oh, no. That’s it, but that’s enough. All told, there are approximately thirteen separate scenes in this comic, some of which have no apparent connection to what’s going on or have any transitions that make sense. The average, well-scripted comic of the 22-page-length variety has seven or eight scenes. Spectacular Spider-Men #2 has nearly double that in roughly the same space, so to say this issue feels frantic and overstuffed is an overstatement.

What’s great about Spectacular Spider-Men #2? The camaraderie between Peter and Miles is strong, and Peter’s excessive quippy-ness from the first issue is toned down here. The mention of Arcadium at least drops a subtle clue that the out-of-nowhere scenes involving random people may be part of some type of simulation that makes dreams come true… maybe. Plus, the action is well done.

What’s not so great about Spectacular Spider-Men #3? Weisman needs to settle down and focus by cutting out the unnecessary fluff to keep the story from reading like a chaotic jumble. For example, there’s no reason for Jane Foster to make a cameo when her expertise has nothing to do with pathology. There’s no reason to include a brief scene suggesting a random citizen is attacked by one of the Vermin when the Spider-Men encounter them later. There’s no reason to take up an entire page of Miles greeting the regulars in the E.S.U. coffee shop.

Tighten the focus, let the scenes, keep what’s necessary, remove what’s not. A reader shouldn’t have to be hopped up on Pop Rocks and Mountain Dew to enjoy this issue.

About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.

Follow @ComicalOpinions on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter

Bits and Pieces

Spectacular Spider-Men #2 is marked by great art, great action, and an intriguing mystery at its heart. However, the script is overshadowed by too many scenes, chaotically placed, which leaves you feeling like it was meant to be read while scrolling through Twitter (or X or whatever they call it these days).