Customer Reviews

THE SPIDER PB: Scavengers of the Slaughtered Sacrifices

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Oh, lordy, where to start? I know: the good. Gene Colan is still a master. This book features beautiful black and white art by Mr. Colan. Quite nice stuff. The packaging is quite nicely designed. Quality crafting there. Now, the bad: This is absolutely one of the worst written graphic novels I've read in many a moon. Why? Because the writer, Don McGregor, is usually a man I trust. I bought this thing with no reservations, thinking that there was no way that this team could disappoint me. McGregor (who does get a little verbose even in his good stuff) really needed an iron-fisted editor here. The preaching tone of the dialogue (censorship is evil!) is the primary problem. The parodies of pop-culture figures are amusing for a while but get tiresome. This book reads like someone's parody of bad fan fiction. The format keeps bouncing back and forth between the traditional comic style (captions/word ballons) to more of an illustrated novel style. This concept can work when properly executed, but it sure didn't here.

It's rare that I get this worked up over a disappointing comic, but considering that I lost [$$] and much of my time on this thing, I have a right to gripe. I want my money back!! Actually, I want Don and Gene to try this again and do it right!

I've been a fan of the Spider for a long time. The pulps were wll before my time but I've been able to find a number of the paperbacks and also enjoyed the old Eclipse comic series. I was very excited about this all-new graphic novel, especially because it featured the art of one of my 1970's favorite artists Gene Colan. The story was in the seemingly capable hands of Don McGregor, another regular Marvel writer from the 70's and 80's.

The story starts out well enough as the Spider is investigating a series of brutal murders which have all been inspired by scenes in popular TV shows of the day. That's right I said TV. Rather than keep the Spider set in the 1930's, mcGregor elects to set his story in modern times and parody the names of popular TV shows such as "The Why Files" and "Tiffany the
Werewolf Killer" or some such thing. The fiend behind the murders is called the Slaughterhouse Skeleton (which IS a name right out of the pulps) and he somehow knows the Spider's true identity.

Unfortunately the script really bogs down after a strong opening. McGregor seemed to have a good idea but just didn't know how to fill it out and thus we get a couple of good bookends but the middle is slow and tedious and lacks the intesity and terror of the pulp stories. Colan's art is done strictly in pencils and has a gritty, unfinished work that works well with the character, but probably isn't best suited to the more modern setting.