‘Spider-Woman Vol. 4: Devil’s Reign’ review

Being a superhero comic, the informative nature of the movie set life is soon thrown into disarray when ninjas show up. There’s a clear and present character set up at work here, though this adventure feels like a side quest to a larger story. You get that sense thanks to the Night Nurse hinting at Jessica maybe not spending enough time with her kid, but the story quickly runs off to a movie set. Given Devil’s Reign is about to kick into gear, one can surmise a side adventure was necessary.

That roughly amounts to Spider-Woman fighting her Skrull nemesis, Queen Varanke, who has kidnapped her child on orders from Kingpin. This is a Devil’s Reign tie-in, but really it’s easily read without following that event. Pacheco uses the event to give reason to some rather bad times for Spider-Woman and now Jessica Drew is racing against the clock to save her kid.

Classic hair rip.
Credit: Marvel

When the fight with Varanke kicks into gear, a chase takes place to get a hold of Spider-Woman’s child. Playing into the Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibe is Spider-Woman not knowing if heroes who pop in are Skrull or not, which is solidly played for laughs. Meanwhile, readers will root for Spider-Woman to punch everybody that shows up be it Spider-Man or Iron Man if it means she can save her kiddo. There’s a page or two that doesn’t quite work – the crash could have used more especially compared to the packed pages around it, for instance – but it’s a solid action frenzy.

Something this series does so masterfully is capture the high-octane action through clever layout design. When the action ramps up, Pérez starts using angular panels that seem to zig and zag with the action. Panels within panels, like a cutaway from a speeding van to show what’s inside, add interesting visual design to what could be an average fight scene by another artist. There’s an incredibly cool page with a curving panel structure that plays off Varanke morphing into different people, leading to a satisfying punch by Spider-Woman to shut her up. There’s always something visually interesting to look at and this issue continues that trend.

Wrapping up the collection is Pacheco’s excellent finale, which brings a lot of familiar characters that popped up in this journey right back into the fight with Spider-Woman. If this issue is proof of anything it’s that Pacheco should be writing Deadpool. From the self-referential jokes, the editors notes that pile up and in some cases involve conversations with Pacheco and the editors, to clever onomatopoeias, Spider-Woman #21 delights more senses than most comics are capable of.