Scarlet Spider #8 (2012)

Scarlet Spider #8 (2012)

Written by Chris Yost and Penciled by Kohi Pham

Page 1-4:

So the crisis at the Roxxon oil plant continues as Kaine is surrounded by the group of D-list Texas heroes (who are actually pretty neat). They all get really nice introductions by kaine's narration. It's neat to see new characters who are a bit fresh. We've got a guy who can turn into a tornado, a girl with some kind of fire powers, a man made of lightning, some kind of alien in a space suit, and a gunslinging girl.

Page 5-6: 

Kaine, being the cool guy he is, throws the pistolero girl behind him out the window...pointing out that he isn't very subtle. He still manages to dodge super-powered fire and lightning though.

I noticed that this series uses a lot of fire effects and fiery colors to set a nice artistic tone.

Page 7-12:

Kaine gets mind-attacked by the alien and this causes him to fall off the building he was climbing on. Then again, this is a spider-man we are talking about, he manages to swing away out of the Rangers (yes, the group of the heroes are called the Rangers, as in Texas Rangers) reach.

Mr. Walsh [the CEO of Roxxon) tries to pin this whole thing on Kaine, not unlike something JJJ would attempt in his early years.

Page 13-16:

Zoe, the daughter of Mr. Walsh, explains how the man pretty much bribes all the police and how he's the real villain. I never trusted Oil Tycoons anyways...

Kaine takes a bike to the nearby town while Mr Walsh tells his staff to prepare the mechs for extra security. Mechs? Wow! Maybe him and Lex Luthor can trade tips.

Page 17-19: 

Zoe and Kaine make it to an empty building where zoe says evidence of her father's evil has been removed. Why exactly would he keep around a stash of dead bodies that have his fingerprints on them? The Rangers get the jump on kaine, but they discover in the middle of their brawl that the bodies were buried under the empty looking room. Couldn't he just have burned the evidence?

An experiment that is going on in the other room (hinted at the start of the issue) explodes a man into an electric monster, and the Rangers and spider are left to deal with it.

I think this issue is pretty interesting, and I still love the art style and tone. A solid 7.5/10. These new heroes (even if they are working for the bad guy) are actually pretty neat at least from a visual perspective. The art and moment to moment writing really sells this book, while the overall plot is pretty lackluster. That's why the score is a bit lower from me.

7/21/13

Today I read all of Superior Carnage and Superior Spiderman in the airport. I actually really liked the way Carnage came out, with a good mix of humor and horror. The cover is also a play on the original superior spiderman #1 cover, which I liked. That issue basically talks about how Cletus [or however you spell his name] has lost his brain after the end of minimum carnage (In scarlet spider) [which I didn't read], and now he is in the middle of a prison going berserk without even any intelligence to speak of.

I wanted to note that I also got the trade for Superior #1-5 and I'm planning on picking up superior Team-up at some point. Also. I won't be reading Superior Foes since it doesn’t seem like a long-running kind of book and it's a bit too much of a comedy for me. The only villain I even like in that lineup is the Shocker, and he is the most downplayed in the cast.