Regular listeners of the AIPT Comics Podcast will no doubt be well aware of my affinity for Spider-Punk. It takes everything in me not to fanboy hard over this book and this character on a regular basis, and our chats with writer Cody Ziglar have been some of my favorite episodes we’ve ever had on the show. So why am I here again, extolling the virtues of Hobie Brown and his merry band of badasses in collected format? Because I can.
With that in mind – and because I have already talked about this series so much – I’ve boiled this review down to three major reasons why you should snag this trade paperback collection.
The story is one hit after another
Like any good punk record, Spider-Punk doesn’t waste any time in jumping right into the good stuff. We’re introduced to the Spider-Band in the midst of an action sequence, and we get their deal right away. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s just something cathartic about seeing these heroes trading music lingo quips and putting the hurt on a bunch of neo-Nazis.
We get precious few moments of backstory for each of these characters, but their obvious camaraderie does much of the heavy lifting here. The friendship between our heroes carries much of the book, and it feels great to see them clean up the scene together. The quips are flying faster than the punches sometimes, making for a book that is consistently so much fun to read.
The artwork is righteous
The art in Spider-Punk is some of the most exciting and energetic work to come out of Marvel in the last few years. Justin Mason and Jim Charalampdis lean into the punk aesthetic, delivering pages that look like something out of a underground zine, or even the liner notes for a particularly wild album. Each costume and power set is given the utmost care throughout, with each of the series’ characters having a perfectly punk look and feel. Some of the real standouts here include Ta$kmaster’s Danzig-inspired makeover and the visualization of Daredevil’s sonar vision. Oh, and just about everyone has some kind of spiked or otherwise exaggerated shoulder pads. Everyone looks hard as hell, their fashion choices nicely complementing their attitudes.
Between this miniseries and Rogue’s Gallery, I had no problem with naming Justin Mason my favorite artist of 2022 on the podcast.
That P.M.A.
That’s “Positive Mental Attitude,” ya olds, and Spider-Punk has it in heaping helpings. This is a story all about the underdogs and how they can rise up and save the world, one city at a time. Things get progressively more dire for Hobie and his friends, but they never quite give up on the idea that they can change everything if they just keep fighting. There’s an inspirational quality to this, to be certain, but it also leads to some truly inventive action beats and some fun moments of levity. The stakes can occasionally feel a little undercut by one joke too many, but it’s always refreshing to see how much these characters believe in themselves.
When the Spider-Band starts losing, they don’t just fight harder, they get annoyed. There’s a feeling here that they never believe they’re going to lose — or if they do, they just bury it under a ton of snotty bravado so the bad guys never see them sweat. The crew gets creative when dispatching the villains, leading to a true show-stopping number in the final issue that made me smile from ear to ear. These heroes never say “die,” and that’s one of the reasons why readers will wanna follow them to the end.
If you haven’t yet given Spider-Punk a spin, this collection is the perfect chance to get in on the character before he inevitably steals the show in this year’s Across the Spider-Verse.
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