Dark Reign: The Sinister Spider-Man #2 Review

Reign’s World! Reign’s World! Party time! Excellent!

(The puns don’t get any better, folks.)

DARK REIGN: THE SINISTER SPIDER-MAN #2
We Need A Hero
WRITER: Brian Reed
ARTIST: Chris Bachalo with Rob Disalvo
INKS: Townsend, Mendoza, Disalvo & Sibal
COLOURS: Bachalo with Mossa & Fabela
LETTERS: Jared K. Fletcher

PLOT:
While JJJ deals with the PR nightmare of a dead prostitute in his room (planted by Mac Gargan), Mr. Gargan explains his love of eating squirrels. He then starts a gang war by beating on a gang and saying it was another gang. Genius.

Afterwards, he swings away with blonde triplets. All of this to annoy Mayor Jameson, through the gang war, not the triplets.

Meanwhile, Dr. Shep Gundarrson is trying to help villains cope with their bad experiences against Gargan, they all having lost limbs fighting him and they are all incredibly crazy to boot. The Doctor gives them new mechanical limbs so all the villains can take on Spider-Man!

JJJ goes to Director of H.AM.M.E.R., Norman Osborn, for help in dealing with the gang war in New York. JJJ wants Ms. Marvel (“Sex sells, Osborn!”), but Mr. Director has a different idea…Mac Gargan. Who now wants to kill Jameson twice as bad. Cliff-hanger…

LIKES:
-Seeing this crazy, demented Spider-Man is pretty cool.
-Inventive panel layouts.

DISLIKES:
-Chris Bachalo’s art.
-Disalvo’s art which takes over midway.
-Not a lot of plot in this issue.

THOUGHTS:
This issue is padding in comic form. Exactly like padding. It fills up the mattress and doesn’t look great either. This mini-series is four issues, but cut this issue out and you wouldn’t miss anything that couldn’t be told in a few sentences. After a decent cliff-hanger last issue, the dead hooker, I was expecting some problems for poor ol’ JJJ. Nah, it was just swept under the rug. Who cares, right? I’m wondering if this new gang war will go the same way. Last issue was decent due to Gargan’s inner monologue, being as messed up as it was. We see less of that this issue, so the issue suffers because of it.

We get EVEN MORE Z-List villains in this issue, which I’m getting pretty tired of. In all the mini-series, we just seem to get terrible villains only there to get beat on because nobody writing a main title will care if “Eleven” gets smacked three ways to hell. Once in a while, these type of villains can be kooky and quite funny. All together, it just gets tiresome and strenuous.

The art definitely could have been better. If you haven’t seen Bachalo’s art, you’re lucky. In all seriousness, Bachalo’s art is very sketchy and very jagged. Filled with pale or white backgrounds, which just doesn’t look good to me. Not my style. It’s awful. The artist that takes over near the end isn’t much better, blander and simpler than Bachalo’s artwork. However, some of the panel layout on the pages is inventive and different, Bachalo can do that very well. See, there is a silver lining!

FAVOURITE QUOTE:
“I am Doctor Everything. I see everything. I hear everything. I can do everything.”
“Except put clothes on, apparently.”
“When you have attained omnipotence, you realise clothing is but a distraction.”
“Dude, your junk is a distraction.”

OVERALL:
1.5 out of 5 webheads.

For $3.99? Forget it.