The hoodie is back and Kaine is heading out to Las Vegas!
Writer: Peter David
Artist: Mark Bagley
Publisher: Marvel Comics
First Read Reactions
- …but first, he has to kick the asses of two horribly inept assassins.
- Meanwhile, the Las Vegas Police Department is apparently very corrupt. Considering what happened with Tupac, I’m not surprised.
- Word of advice: If a dude is able to pull apart a concrete prison wall to get to you, then punching him in the face isn’t going to do anything.
- Kaine is even worse at small talk than Ben.
- Look, I hate Powerpoint presentations as much as the next person, but that’s no reason to tackle your clone out of a hotel window.
- Wow. These costume changes are impressive.
- AW, C’MON ON!
The Verdict
The issue ends with some great dialogue and the beginnings of a great fight, which I have no doubt we’ll see play out in spectacular fashion next month. It’s a somewhat frustrating cliffhanger, but at least it leaves us wanting more rather than the telegraphed ‘Kaine vs. Inept Assassins’ one we had before.
Unfortunately, the rest of the issue is not nearly as good as what we’ve seen in Ben Reilly: The Scarlet Spider to this point. There’s still a lot of great dialogue, but we also see a surprising amount of forced exposition, stilted interactions, and various characters playing idiot ball to advance to plot. None of it’s bad—it really can’t be with Kaine in the mix—but it’s definitely the weakest issue of the series thus far.
Thankfully, this looks like more of a slight bump in the road rather than the start of a downward trend. I could be wrong, of course, but I don’t see how that’s possible when the next issue looks to feature Mark Bagley drawing the heck out of a fight between Kaine and Ben Reilly.
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