THE GIST OF IT… Dark Web is in full SWING! (Pun definitely intended). I’m here to give you a little insight on what this Nightmare Before Christmas issue brings us that even Tim Burton wouldn’t read. In this issue there’s a evil scheme by Marvel to get you to buy Dark Web spinoff titles. Plus, Nick Lowe isn’t here! Who is this Kaeden McGahey?! A clone of Lowe? I’ll try to figure all this out while I get in my last of holiday shopping done. Amazon, is my friend!
(Writer) Zeb Wells
(Artist) Ed McGuinness
(Colorist) Marcio Menyz
(Letterer) VC’s Joe Caramagna
(Editor) Kaeden McGahey
(EIC) C.B. Cebulski
Date Released 12/14/2022
Issue Number #15 LGY #909
Price Tag: $4.99
STORY: Supernatural Demons from Limbo have taken over New York City, so just a regular day in the lives of New Yorkers. Venom saves a baby from being eaten and then gives reasons on why the kid and his parents will need therapy sessions in the future. Spidey left the X-Men (Dark Web: X-Men explains why) to get to Norman, the ONE guy that helped Peter find MJ when “he lost her” to which the end result wasn’t good. So Spidey figures he’s just the guy that can get them out of the current pickle that they are in, because stupid is what stupid does. Spidey and Chasm finally meet, Ben explains that he’s a bad guy now and it’s all Peter’s fault (..typical). The meeting is short since Venom shows up and starts acting all 1990’s. While Spidey and Venom duke it out, Ben does something to Ms Marvel (that’ll you need to read Dark Web: Ms Marvel to find out) and pays a visit to J Jonah Jameson.
Spidey outsmarts Venom with a lighter, a book about Ramen Ninjas and high frequency screaming demon possessed Christmas trees.
Goblin Queen then shows up with Hallows’ Eve to collect the defeated and “unhinged” Venom. The issue closes with Chasm finishing all his chores and now wants playtime with Spider-Man.
This is usually the part where I jot down a breakdown off all topics in bullet points, but I’m not going to do that anymore. Why?
- You readers are already going to see the topics I’m going to breakdown when you scroll down the review. It’s not like you can click on the topic you want to read about and avoid the rest. It takes up too much space and you guys/gals rather get to into the review. I have also decided to put the “Nitpicks” in-between the central topics.
- I’m lazy and don’t feel like doing it.
There. Got that out of the way.
SPIDEY WINS: Spider-Man won a fight! OMG, Spidey WON, JUST BY USING THAT TASTY BRAIN OF HIS!!! I’m almost beginning to deduce that after the tenth time Venom said “I’m going to eat your brains” it triggered Peter to actually use it to win the fight. Brains over Brawn. Granted this is “unhinged” Venom, but after getting the beat down by Tombstone, Vulture, and BOTH Hobgoblins, within 14 issues…I’ll take it! I’ll give props to Wells by keeping Spidey’s humor in check during the fight. I don’t think our very own fan loving symbiote expert, Tyler, would be upset at this. Eddie wasn’t “all there” during this battle (…he wasn’t “all there” to begin with, but I digress)
Okay… HOW did that mother get her baby boy out of that demon stroller so fast with that baby securely LOCKED IN? As a Parent, I know FULL WELL, that it takes about 30 seconds, close to a minute, to unbuckle all those buckle straps that keep the child in place. The baby or mother must have “phasing” ability to get out of that situation that fast. One could theorize that the straps (and white blanket?) vanished once the stroller morphed into the demonic Pac-Man. Look I’m happy the baby and parents are safe…I may question HOW, but I’m happy!
90’S VENOM: I don’t read Venom (that’s TYLER’s job.), but when I asked Tyler (BECAUSE THAT’S HIS JOB!) on why Venom is even here, here is our conversation.
Tyler: “He was stuck in the future trying to figure out a way back to his son, so even though he couldn’t go back in time, he could take control of a symbiote that was in limbo since limbo isn’t at a fixed point in time so basically Eddie went to limbo to try and get back to the present, and wants Maddie’s help to help him save his son, but obviously Maddie has other ideas.”
Chi-Town: “So let me get this straight..future Eddie wants to get to past Dylan, gets “No Time like Limbo-Time” symbiote to get back to the present with the help from “Flour Mixture” Maddie..”
Tyler: “Just roll with it, Chi-Town.”
I’m definitely getting the nostalgia vibes from Wells writings that fit 90’s Venom characteristics. It’s nice to see how aged it is, compared to the modern time banter Spidey was throwing back.
Classic Venom style/characteristics…but, Sony Movie Venom feet..?.
Tyler: “Just ROLL with it, Chi-Town!”
REILLY INVITES: So Ben wants Peter’s soul and in order to get to that goal he has some chores to do first. It seems that Chasm will be the reason why some of Spider-Man’s supporting cast end up in Limbo. Ms Marvel has already been “trapped door in’ed” and J Jonah Jameson had his turn off panel, supposedly. It’s a safe bet that Norman, Felicia and Mary Jane were next on Ben’s list which would explain some of the spin off titles of this event. I’m curious to see how he got Felicia and MJ down in Limbo and Dark Mark will answer that when he reviews Mary Jane/Black Cat Volume 2 #1 next week.
Anyone else getting this scene when reading this panel. I bet Well’s was.
GRADE: Giving this one a C+. It’s an average Spider-Man comic. Zeb Wells focuses on the key things that make Spider-Man, Spider-Man. He funny, he can fight his own battles, he wins the day. Of course there’s the great art by Ed McGuinness! Each page is a splash page you would want to use for you smart phone wallpaper, especially if you are a Spider-Man vs Venom fan. Unfortunately, the story arc itself brings the issue down. With Dark Web #1 already on shelves and this hitting your LCS today, we are NO CLOSER into any hints on why the things are what they are. Then we have the classic Marvel evil “cash grab” scheme. “To find out what happened to these other characters, buy this title!” This is a Spider-Man/X-Men event and the ONLY spin off series I’m excited about is Mary Jane/Black Cat, based off who is writing and drawing it. Notice the word “excited”, not “interested” or “curious”. It’s EXCITED! That’s the kind of vibe you should have when you walk into a comic shop to buy an issue (or digital if you prefer not to go outside).
You’ll also notice that I’m not covering much of the X-Men. Of course not, in my opinion, you’ll get the gist of this Dark Web Story just by reading ASM and the two issues of DW. I sense more content will be in MJ/BC, but that’s spider verse and you are not going to get that much Spidey when reading up on the mutant portion of this story. All we got from this issue is Maddie taking Eddie and warning Spidey not to call her “Jean”. That’s about it.
I wish I could go on with more, but there’s really not much to tell. Wells does a decent job telling a Spider-Man story and Ed spices it up with great artwork. Thought about giving this issue a B just because I couldn’t see anything “bad” in the book. I just can’t get around this whole year long mystery box story arc. Characters in this volume so far are being written like they are walking through a revolving door, leaving the reader to go around in circles.
CLONES OF LOWE: Something is happening over there in the spidey offices. Has Nick Lowe gone into Limbo as well? There’s some guy named Kaeden McGahey, who I never heard of. Then there’s Albert Banaszak, another editor who admits he’s a clone of Lowe in this issue’s letter section. Speaking of which…NO, there’s not letter from Dark Mark that was printed, but some letter’s were published and we have 2/3 that are “Meh” on the whole Black Cat/Spidey shipping and want to know what the heck happened between Peter and Mary Jane! I’m a type of guy that likes to investigate and read between the lines, but as of now…I can only theorize. You can ALWAYS check out our Discord and join in on the conversations we have there. We get DEEP over there in the Spider-Mythos and what we think is going on in the Marvel Offices.
TUNE IN NEXT WEEK AS DARK MARK REVIEWS THE TWO FAN FAVORITE LADIES TO PETER PARKER AND SPIDER-MAN!!! Yep, Debra Whitman is NOWHERE to be found.
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Oh, ok, thank you Michael.
From the glimpse of the scene I got from this review, it seemed like a real body showing under the symbiote. It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s what the artist drew and then they added the text to rectify it.
@Michael: I would say this issue was coordinated with the “Recent Venom”. As far as your other Venom questions, I would defer to Tyler on our discord. You are correct, we still don’t know what powers the goo gave Ben or Janine’s “Masks” powers. Honestly, do we care?
@ Sthenurus: This whole arc feels line BND 2.0. Let’s not forget, this isn’t really Ben Reilly that died in revelations, it’s Ben 27 whose was put through quite the ringer.
@ Hallows Evan: I quite proud of that quibble statement too! I kinda liked my “It’s No Time like Limbo Time” better, but hey, it gets the job done. I’m not sure if the X-Men and Venom fans are “enjoying” the book, but it definitely gives them SOMETHING to talk about.
@ Stuart: Same, not holding my breathe. The only way for that to happen is if Bob Iger came to Marvel with the mindset that I have and said. “Fix this and fix it now. Or I find someone who does.”
This whole run is making me wish for the glory days of Howard Mackie and John Byrne. When your big ongoing mystery is being ignored by the writer, you break up the greatest couple in all of comics yet again just to push fans into liking the Peter/Black Cat pairing they’re forcing on us with no deserved build-up or logic, Peter is working for the man who killed his girlfriend, clone and UNBORN BABY GIRL, and you make Ben Reilly evil yet again and his big plan is to make Snow Whi-er, I mean Peter eat his poisoned app- er, I mean, his fruit, then what, exactly, would be the reason for me to give Marvel my money to read The Mediocre Spider-Man? What’s the big appeal of this issue? That Peter finally won a fight on his own in his fifteenth issue in yet another pointless relaunch of Spidey’s ongoing monthly?
I hope Nick Lowe’s absence from this issue means that the higher ups at Marvel are asking Lowe and the folks at the Spider-books right now what exactly that they think they’re doing and hopefully are telling him to change course on this run A.S.A.P. before it gets even worse. I’m not holding my breath on that, but I honestly don’t see the point in stretching this run out any longer when there’s so much wrong with this relaunch that needs fixing.
I hope you all are having a wonderful night and thanks for reading my rant. Stay safe, True Believers.
@Aqu- Peter says “Eddie looks weird. Almost plastic. Is there anything human under there or just a bad memory?” The implication is that Eddie’s “body” is just the symbiote mimicking human flesh.
@Chi-Town — I saw Venom’s feet in the preview, and that bothered me, too! And that panel of Chasm reading made me think of the first ten minutes of Child’s Play.
When I read “…JUST BY USING THAT TASTY BRAIN OF HIS!!!” I laughed out loud. Thank you for that.
You know, at least when we were waiting for Last Remains / the Kindred storyline to come to an end, it was to have some sort of resolution to our suspense. But with the “six months mystery,” I’ve come to a place where I can feel myself starting to stop caring, and I just want the reveal so we can move on already.
I’m glad there are X-Men and Venom fans who are enjoying this story. That makes it a little better for me.
How is Eddie’s body showing under Venom if he is just a conscience inhabiting a symbiote?
Unless he regains a physical human body in issues 11-13 (which I have to read still), this is quite an unforgivable mistake.
Chasm attitude is stupid. I hate when characters are driven by the plot rather than the plot driven by the characters.
I mean, Peter is there, he says basically “buddy, been looking for you to help fix you, let’s go” and Ben goes full vilain by basically saying “F you, I’m trashing New York lol.”
Never, ever, even during the whole jackal nonsense would Ben go that far. Hell, KAINE wouldn’t go that far and he is literally supposed to be the worst of Peter incarnate.
Ya the venom thing didn’t make sense at all. Even less so in context of the current ongoing venom book. It was cool, but completely non sensical.
I’ve read X-Men dark web 1 and it’s basically a team up between Spidey and his amazing friend, where Peter sounds like a (mutant) racist. I… Didn’t enjoy it, to put it mildly.
So far very disappointed with dark web. Feels like clone conspiracy 2.0
This issue wasn’t very well coordinated with Venom 13- in Venom 13 it was a plot point that Eddie was using a “dead” symbiote and therefore it wasn’t afraid of fire. But in this issue Eddie loses because the symbiote freaks out at the screaming. Maybe it only worked because Eddie was brainwashed into believing he was wearing a living symbiote? So it was psychosomatic?
Also, I thought that the rule was Eddie is only immune to Peter’s Spider-sense while using the symbiote he originally bonded with? When he’s not using a symbiote or he’s using another symbiote, he still triggers Peter’s Spider-Sense?
At least this issue explains what the point of the demon invasion is- to pressure Peter into eating the fruit!
We still don’t know what powers the goo gave Ben. Or what powers the masks give Janine.