Snapshot! Non-Stop Spider-Man – Finale

Writer: Joe Kelly
Artist: Chris Bachalo and Cory Smith

You walk into the room. You can feel the excitement. Red and blue balloons hang from the ceiling, Cool & The Gang’s Celebration can be heard, this is the Spider-Man review you’ve all been waiting for.

Across town Chi-Town and Dark Mark sit alone in an empty community centre, no one cares about Kindred anymore this is the finale to end all finales.

Your host looks up, a happy tear in his eye. “You’ve actually caught me in the middle of reading the final issue” he laughs, “go grab a drink I just need to see how Spidey saves the day this time”’ He turns the page, “hmm, odd ending”. Your host frantically turns to the final page. “Oh there’s a letter from the editor. That’s not unusual” he tells himself. “A high profile finale like Non-Stop Spider-Man, the editor probably wants to thank all his collaborators…Wait! What! Non-Stop Spider-Man’s not over….but, but, no. Renamed? New #1 coming soon…” Your host collapses to the floor. Still crying. Though the tears are no longer of joy.

“Turn off that music!” he sobs, uncontrollably. A single balloon pops. Then nothing but silence.

Depth of Field:
A brain-fart Spider-Man saves Baron Zemo from a group of manimals, before transforming into the Man-Spider.

Focal point:
Spidey lies comatose on the floor of Baron Zemo’s plane, his mask in tatters. The hero is defeated as Zemo’s plane pulls into a Hydra helicarrier hovering over New York. We dedicate an entire slash page to the title; The Secret Lives of Savages: Part Two. A story this grand deserves the full page treatment. Even if the title is nonsense.

Suddenly, Spider-Man’s mask is reformed and this gives the hero the energy to tackle Zemo. They fall onto the floor of the hanger. I know the consistency of Peter’s mask is a stylistic choice, it’s also distracting for the reader. I’m not an artist, I’m an ***** on the internet, but surely the aim of the art is to be convincing. Spider-Man’s mask being in one piece, then ripped, then restored is sloppy story telling. It’s not even slightly torn. It’s pristine.

Spider-Man, loosing his mental abilities, starts babbling about finding a cure as he, Zemo and Wülf trade blows. The dialogue depicting Spider-Man’s decent is quiet funny, as he mistakenly refers to the villain as Karen Emo and struggles to remember the word for Lab.

Suddenly, Zemo is betrayed by Wülf who reveals he is part of a secret group; the Immaculatum. They also believe in the purity of the bloodline, but not in the same way as Hydra. Honestly it’s some form of Racism, and I must have been shot with A+ as well cause I don’t think I really followed it. Anyway Immaculatum is made up of a group of people who can turn into animals? Disguise themselves as a animals? It wasn’t really clear but the art made it seem like they were using some sort of image inducer to appear as animal/human hybrids. Odd, when their whole gimmick is human purity. Wülf and co. throw Zemo and Spidey off the helicarrer and escape….never to be seen again(?)

On the fall out of the plane Spider-Man realises he needs to save Zemo, and himself. Despite being braindead Spidey realises that in order to survive the fall into the river he needs to break the surface tension. I’m not a scientist either, so I don’t know if this would work, though it is believable in this universe. In fact if this had been done by Peter on any other day I’d be complementing Kelly on remember that Peter is a scientist….but how does a supposedly brain-fart Spider-Man figure this out? There’s no stakes to this new status quo if Kelly is going to drop it for plot convince.

My final confession. I am not an artist, a scientist, or a New York expert, but I’m reasonable sure that if you fall into the Hudson River and swim to the closest island, that island will not be a sandy beach with palm trees. But that’s where Spider-Man and Zemo swim ashore. Zemo quickly bloodies his knife on Spider-Man, who falls to the ground. Dead…

Until slowly he begins to rise and morph himself into the Man-Spider, all he can think is “KILL”. Honestly for me, I would have ended this here and called this Earth 619. This Man-Spider could appear in Spider-Verse 2…3…how many Spider-Verses have we had? But Kelly and editor Nick Lowe seem to think this is an exciting and original concept and so are going to let this play out in a spin-off series, Savage Spider-Man, coming soon.

I won’t spend a lot of time on the art work, by now we know what to expect from Bachalo. Though even the editor appears to be tired of waiting, and so brings in Cory Smith to finish the issue. Honestly I liked Smith’s work a lot. He was able to mirror Bachalo’a style, but in a way that was easier to follow and told the story rather than trying to upstage the story. Zemo’s murderous rage on the island is particularly striking.

B Roll:
Those who also read my reviews of Symbiote Spider-Man will remember that I am fond of the odd-couple relationship Dr. Strange and Black Cat are developing. They have a charming back and forth as they clash over how to work together. I only bring it up as a counterpoint to the scene this issue between Strange and Norah. Which lacks all the charm of the former pairing.

Photobombed:
Kelly’s brain-fart Spider-Man sounds suspiciously like Deadpool, with lots of personalities fighting internally. Probably a coincidence.

Negative Exposure: I think my opinion of this series is clear based on my last five reviews. I want to let you know I am not a negative person. I love Spider-Man and comics, they have certainly taught me to “hold on” as Aunt May would say. Nick Lowe describes how he sees this series in his letter, and it sounds great, but his dream and what’s on the page don’t match. I would love to come here and share my excitement, but this series has been a waste of time and money. Why all the delays only to drop Bachalo at the last hurdle. Does he have a new X-Men #1 to launch? I can’t imagine rebooting as Savage Spider-Man was ever the original plan. And the goal of a non-stop action romp didn’t mix well at all with Kelly’s over the top sci-fi mumbo-jumbo plot. Hopefully a gear shift from Non-Stop to Savage will breathe some new life into the series.

Grade: D, some funny dialogue, no resolution or acknowledgment of any plot.

I don’t think this was what Uncle Ben had in mind, dear reader, but I do believe that with great power comes great responsibility, so sleep easy. This is not the end, I will continue to read Savage Spider-Man, so you don’t have to. So join me, presumably sometime in 2022 to see how Spider-Man gets out of this mess, probably in a similar way to the last few times we turned into a spider. Will this be reflected in Amazing Spider-Man? 100% not.

Zoom In:
What did you think of Non-Stop Spider-Man? Let me know in the comments!

• Adam