Story: Untitled
Reviewer: Paul Sebert
Writer: Robert Kirkman
Artists: Cory Walker
Colorist: Bill Crabtree
Letterer: VC’s Cory Petit
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Publisher: The House of Ideas
You know there seems to be some kind of unwritten rule set regarding superhero team-ups that you almost always have the superheroes duke it out over some dumb misunderstanding. Whether it’s a case of mistaken identity or a clash of ideals fans it’s almost become an informal greeting of sorts for superheroes to initially start slugging the tar out of one another.
Here’s a pure and simple team up book in which breaks that rule. There’s no real fighting, no bickering between the protagonists here. In fact Spider-Man and Invincible actually hit things off rather well right from the beginning. That isn’t to say the story’s boring as there is a lot of humorous interplay between the two.
In a nutshell this issue is actually a tie-in to a future story-arch in the pages of Invincible, cleverly introducing the character to new readers while giving fans of the series a peak of things to come in Mark’s world. Dimension hopping bad guy Angston Levy has tossed Invincible into the Marvel Universe, just at the time that Spider-Man is caught in a slugfest with Doctor Octopus. After a brief fight, Spidey takes Invincible on a tour of the Marvel Universe including a brief meeting of the New Avengers.
It’s very funny brisk read, and Kirkman does a very good job of explaining what the character of Invincible is all about. Readers who are already fans of the Image series will most likely be pleased to see Marvel characters drawn in Cory Walker’s style, although this proves to be somewhat uneven. (I particularly didn’t care for his Captain America.) A few of his designs don’t work. Furthermore Doc Ock is handled as a bit too much of a comedy figure for my tastes, and goes down all too easy. That said even with a couple of flaws, this is a very enjoyable little done-in-one story.
