Reviewer: James Hatton
Story Title: Not an Angel
Written by: Fiona Avery
Penciled & Cover: Mark Brooks
Inked by: Jaime Mendoza, Crimelab’s Victor Diazaba
Colored by: Uncredited
Lettered by: Rus Wooton
Editor: Jennifer Lee
Publisher: Marvel Comics
This book had a bit of hype going into it, if only because of the title and the fact that it’s Marvel’s ‘NEXT BIG THING’. Well, it had Fiona Avery attached to it, and where her Amazing Spidey stories weren’t the best of the Straczynski run, they certainly weren’t completely horrible. So I put a little faith in, and hope that maybe what will come out of it is Avery’s leap into superstardom.
Story
Our story is about Anya. A girl whose mother has run away and she is a discipline case. Christ, doesn’t anybody write about lovable nerds anymore? Then again, if I was going to write another type of Spidey story, I’d probably make my main character a bit more of a badass, only because Peter Parker is Marvel’s own lovable geek.
So, she’s having problems with some bullies and she has to go the infamous ‘spot everyone knows about so you can have a fight’ that appears in most teen dramas.
Now, on the other side of the coin, there is a gentleman who has mastered the art of Neo-Foo and for some reason has to ‘get the initiate’. The initiate is, we can only assume, going to be Anya. He has a fight with his adversaries (who call themselves the Sisterhood of the Wasp). Fight commences, blah blah blah, and Anya is left dead at the end of first issue.
…well that ties it all together… oh wait…
The ‘she’s dead’ angle is probably the worst angle I’ve ever seen used for an ISSUE #1!! We know she’s coming back. It’s not any reason to go and check out issue 2. The main reason ‘I’ would bother picking up number two is to find out how she gets all those Spider-toys that she is wielding on the cover.
Art
First, the cover. Not hella amazing, as we’ve seen it quite a few times before in adverts. Add to this, it relates in no way to the internals of the book which is standard nowadays, but still not right. Plus, it took my girlfriend to comment to me that it was a girl a few months back. Ugh!
Internals of the book are generally strong, except my one gripe—the main character. I love a good anti-hero. Hell, I love a good non-standard anything, but Anya just doesn’t look good. There is something about her look that makes me dislike her. I think it’s the way they draw her nose.
Overall
I’ll say this, if it wasn’t for my dedication to reading the first arc of a book that I buy a #1 for, I probably wouldn’t read #2. The concept is weak. The characterization is great, but they really aren’t characters I want to stand up and cheer for. Oh well, chalk this up to the Spider-Girl title that ISN’T going to be saved 5 times.
