It may have taken 20 issues and $80, but Dan Slott’s Spider-Verse is finally over. Unfortunately for Peter Parker fans, the writer was able to get in one last parting shot by making his sex-crazed concubine Cindy Moon (Can anyone deny that’s how she comes across?) try yet again to get into the pants of Peter Parker. Our hero then takes their relationship to another level by calling her “honey.” Shouldn’t feminist comic book fans be raging over this bizarre and puerile treatment of Silk? The muted criticism is rather strange, but I digress.
When reviewing Spider-Verse Part 6 there is much to cover because it became a giant discombobulated mess. Perhaps one of the main takeaways is that the final battle ends — fast. In fact, the whole final battle is wrapped up so quickly that one of the main villains understands that something does not add up. It’s almost like Dan Slott subconsciously knew what readers would be thinking. He seemed to think that by having Morlun draw attention to the villains’ rapid downfall that readers would believe Spider-Man’s answer: “Everything is going according to my plan.”
What plan? There never really was a plan. For a good portion of Spider-Verse, Otto was in charge. When Peter was nominally the leader, he couldn’t even control his own team members.
Kaine took off to do his own thing, which prompted a “son of a…” response. Cindy took off as well (twice), which prompted a “@#$%! She took off again, didn’t she?!” response, and Dan Slott literally inserted a deus ex machina into the tale, which gave Peter’s team “everything” they needed to prevail. When it all spun out of control, his response was “Whatever you’re doing — drop it! We’re going to Loomworld.”
That doesn’t sound like a plan. That sounds like, “Charge!” (and hope for the best).
Perhaps one of the biggest problems with Spider-Verse is that there is no intellectual consistency. The Inheritors are built up to be almost unstoppable enemies, who then essentially collapse like a house of cards.
In one instance, Solus defeats a version Cosmic Spider-Man in the blink of an eye, but in the next he is effortlessly impaled to death by Kaine. The Inheritors have survived for time eternal, have the ability to clone themselves and insert their life force into crystals, but yet they can’t figure out how to clone a body that is resistant to radiation. The Inheritors feed off the life force of men and women powered by the bite of radioactive spiders, but a landscape with nuclear fallout in the air sucks the life out of them.
Spider-Verse seems as though it was born out of a stream-of-consciousness writing exercise that never had an editor take the time to go over it with a fine-toothed comb.
And what of Superior Spider-Man, you ask? Answer: Dan Slott has him kill Master Weaver — the character who controls “the nature of reality itself,” and the “god in the machine” who gave the spider-team “everything” they needed to be victorious. Yes, in that situation Dan Slott wants readers to believe that Otto would have applied Occam’s Razor to the idea of killing Master Weaver and followed through. I’m inclined to think Otto would be smart enough to know that killing a being that is literally tasked with weaving together space and time would not be wise; he would have found a different (evil) path to victory, but we can always debate that in the comments section. (Luckily for him, Master Weaver’s death seems to have no immediate consequences. How convenient.)
Whether you’re a fan of Spider-Verse or not, let me know what you think in the comments section below. As long as you keep it respectful and don’t start soliciting people for sex like Dan Slott’s Silk, we should get along just fine.
Related: Dan Slott’s Spider-Verse: Peter Parker sadly gives off ‘Where’s Waldo?’ vibe in his own book
Douglas Ernst Blog 