A Hero For Houston
Review of Scarlet Spider #1
& 2
By: Andrew Hines
WHINES@CSUMB.EDU
Let’s take a jump into the Marvel Universe. We will begin in
the middle of what I like to call the Spiderman
Family’s tangled web. From 1975 to 1996, there was an overly convoluted
mega storyline, which came to be known as the Clone Saga. From this, came two particular members of the Spiderman
Family: Ben Reilly and Kaine. Ben was the good clone, who dyed
his hair blonde to distance himself from Peter Parker and became the web-slinging
hero Scarlet Spider. Kaine, the scarred
and degenerating evil clone often battled his “brothers.” Unfortunately Ben
died at the end of a 4-part epic in 1996, when the Green Goblin’s glider
impaled him, thus ending the run of the Scarlet Spider. This past year, we
found Kaine getting a second lease on life after his degeneration was reversed
and his scars healed. He also seems to have gained some semblance of a
conscience and created his own spider costume.
Now on the run from a legal system that barely knows of his
private existence, he was headed for Mexico before he landed in Houston, Texas. He now has a new look
and a new identity as the Scarlet Spider, Houston’s own costumed vigilante. A
man who never asked to be a hero, Kaine discovered a human-trafficking
operation. After nearly killing the men responsible for the smuggling of these
people, he managed to save the lone survivor, a young woman named Aracely. At the end of the first issue,
it seems Aracely’s life may come back to haunt her and Kaine as a deadly new
enemy, the Salamander makes himself
known. Scarlet Spider must now embrace his new life with “all the power, none
of the responsibility” that comes with membership in the Spiderman Family. Now
with this newest threat, he must continue to fight his killer instincts. With the
lives of everyone in the hospital at stake, he must fight for their lives as
well as his own.
Writer Chris Yost may be best known for co-creating the
female Wolverine clone, X-23 and co-writing the current X-Force title. He
brings his clone knowledge to the table and pumps the “awesome” dial up to 11.
Yost puts two decades of Clone Saga into two pages of comic book goodness,
though there’s also a better history in the back of issue 1. Using Peter
Parker’s voice as Kaine’s new moral compass, there could be no better
explanation for his sudden bout of conscience. As mentioned, he even gives the
new Scarlet Spider something and someone to fight for in the form of Aracely,
the young woman he saved in the first issue. This is a wonderful jump into the
realm of arachnids for Mr Yost.
Ryan Stegman does a wonderful job as the first artist for
Scarlet Spider. He brings both humanity and an impressive flair to the pages.
Despite the fact that some of the pages are a little cluttered, we as the
readers get a greater sense of action than most Amazing Spiderman books can
give us. Likewise, he gives the Salamander a more menacing light than most
Spiderman villains, short of Venom or Green Goblin, generally get. From Stegman’s
artwork, we don’t just see Peter Parker with a buzz cut. You see a man truly
attempting to find a way all his own and actively living for the first time in
his life. By their powers combined, Yost and Stegman earn a 9.4 out of 10 for
the first two issues, though officially just the second.
Cover of Scarlet Spider #1:
Cover of Scarlet Spider #2:
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