Who’s a Polymelian, and what does he do? Learn all about it in this issue of The Superior English Teacher. The worlds meanest professor is back to teach a lesson in pain.

Edge of Spider-Verse
SCRIPT: Christos Gage w/ Dan Slott
PENCILS: Guiseppe Camuncoli
INKS: John Dell
COLOR: Antonio Fabela
LETTERER: VC’s Joe Caramagna

Back-up Feature
WRITER: Christos Gage
ART: M.A. Sepulveda
COLORS: Richard Isanove
LETTERER: VC’s Joe Caramagna

VARIANT COVER: Skottie Young
ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Ellie Pyle
EDITOR: Nick Lowe

PLOT: The issue begins with Karn hunting, and seemingly killing a normal looking Spider-Man, but SURPRISE its a cyborg Spider-Man who blasts Karn in his dumb face. Karn shrugs off the blast, and acts overconfident until the Superior Spider-Man and his gang of Spider-buddies appear as backup. The Superior Spider-Man begins to blast Karn with a ray seemingly meant to incapacitate him in order to interrogate the poor lad. Unfortunately for Spock Karn destroys the ray, and a fight commences. It looks like the Spider-Men may have Karn on the ropes when a portal open, and two castelvania rejects hop out of a portal and screw everything out. It’s revealed that they are relatives of Karn, and the lot of them begin to argue as the Spider-Men retreat. Once back in the land of 2099 The Superior Spider-Man begins to concoct a plan having all the Spider-Men except The Evil Spider-Girl, and The Spider-Assassin leave to monitor the multiverse. Once they are alone Spock begins to state the importance of killing Karn and his family committing genocide if necessary. They all come to the agreement that they will stop the family, and survive whatever the cost no matter what Spider-Man gets in the way.

   In the backup story we finally get the background of Karn apparently he is part of a Totem hunting family (Morlun is one such member of the family) who gained access to the multiverse by capturing Universe 000’s weird godlike Spider thing that makes everything, and everyone possible. When attempting to enslave the Spider-celestial Karn hesitates after the Spider-thingy goes all master Splinter on him, and tells him he is different from the rest of the family. The brief hesitation results in the Spider cutting a thread, killing his mother. The rest of his family force him to wear his steampunk helmet so that he will show his shame forever.

STORY: This comic continues to make me feel like I am 8 years old again, everytime a new Spider-Man appears I get so crazily attached, and audibly exclaim how cool it is. Cyborg Spider-Man should just get his own ongoing, he is just too cool. The main story of this issue is pretty simple, but the fight scenes are a lot of fun. A particular highlight for me was seeing The Spider-Ape catch and throw knives into the throats, and hearts of Karn + his siblings. Although it seems pretty cut and dry that throwing knives at someone’s throats would probably kill them in normal circumstances so clearly the Ape should have been included in Superior Spider-Man’s final meeting. Speaking of Superior Spider-Man’s fabled trio, why wasn’t Spider-Man Noir included? I mean he doesn’t go around killing people willy nilly, but at least he carries guns around which should at least qualify him for “Doc Ock’s Murder Squad”. At one point Spock comments that there’s no others “like” him, which is a dumb comment to make because the multiverse is for all extensive purposes infinite so there are bound to be more Spocks, and if they aren’t out there he could just find all of there universes Doctor Octopuses as they would be more than happy to join him.

   Also about the Morlun having a family thing, its kind of lame. They are all dressed in weird old English clothing, and are immensely powerful. Karn is the only one of them with even a smidgen of interesting character qualities, and the backup story explaining them capturing the Spider-God of life just bores me to tears. I really hope Spiderverse doesn’t devolve into pointless highbrow nonsense about the nature of the universe because Slott is no Grant Morrison so I doubt it will be very interesting to read. In summation keep the Spiders lose the god complex. The big bad of this whole storyline will be Morlun’s dad because the thing that Morlun really needed was to have a more powerful father. Morlun is just a boring villain, and his family don’t seem to be much more interesting. They are all powerful characters with seemingly no personality other than “I must kill all the Spiders”, hopefully the storyline ends with Karn teaming up with the Spider-Men to kill his vile family, and remove the boring existence that is Morlun from the entire Multiverse.

ART: Oh Camuncoli why are you so lovely. Every page was lushly drawn, and capable of inciting childlike joy from me. It would weird me out to see Superior Spider-Man with any other artist at this point. Still there is no denying that Camuncoli played castlevania before designing the two new family members of Morlun. They literally have spikewhips, and have the exact same hairstyle as the characters in the videogames.

ODDITIES:

• So if Superior Spider-Man can multiverse jump why wouldn’t he end up in the 2099 timeline of said universe, or does he time travel as well? If he does time travel why wouldn’t he travel to a point before Karn attacked them? It seems in the case of Spider-Cyborg he might have in order to create an ambush but still.
• Spider-Celestial, why you no just delete all of the Morlun family from existence, you clearly have the power
• The nicknames Superior Spider-Man gives the other Spider-Men
• Did Morlun’s entire family originate the look of the English Renaissance or did they pick it up on their own?

BEST BACKGROUND CHARACTER: Spider-Cyborg because who hasn’t wanted this amazing Spider-Man to exist.

B