Spider-Man: Velocity 3-5 Mega Review

“Quit playing it safe, Parker. Mad science problems require mad science solutions.”

Spider-Man devises a Velocity suit to combat a speedy new foe, but what happens when the Web-Slinger can no longer slow down?

WRITER: Dennis “Hopeless” Hallum

ARTIST: Emilio Laiso

COLORIST: Rachelle Rosenberg

LETTERER: VC’s Travis Lanham

COVER ARTIST: Skan

VARIANT COVER ARTISTS: Mark Bagley (#3), Mark Morales & Frank D’Armata (#3), Riccardo Federici (#4), Tom Infante (#5)

PRODUCTION DESIGN: Nick Russell

ASSISTANT EDITOR: Martin Biro

EDITOR: Mark Basso

SPIDER-MAN created by  STAN LEE & STEVE DITKO

STORY: Issue #3 finds Peter bested by the speedster and headed back to Otto’s lab to refine his suit. We learn that the speedster is Haley Harvey, daughter of the deceased James Harvey, and she’s been skipping school. MJ has been putting the pieces together and goes in search of Haley’s mom, Carla. Meanwhile, Spidey tangles again with Haley, who, upon getting a 911 text from her mom, races back to their apartment and spontaneously combusts, with Spidey hot on her heels.

As issue #4 picks up, Spidey catches up to Haley and dunks her into the river to douse her flames. Turns out she was going so fast she was setting the oxygen around her on fire. Spidey returns the unconscious Haley home as MJ reveals to Carla that her husband was working to expose Oscorp before his demise. To further complicate things, Spider-Man is now trapped in his suit and locked into super-speed. He’s going so fast time is at a virtual standstill, which actually gives him time to try and science his way out of things and find a cure for Haley. Haley wakes up and not wanting to listen to reason from her mom, goes racing after Spidey again, which causes her to ignite once more. Spidey gets her attention so they can talk.

Concluding with issue #5, Spidey extinguishes the flame and tries to reason with Haley, who once again gives chase until the Wall-Crawler webs her to a water tower. He reveals he found a cure…and shatters it in front of her. Haley goes into a rage and attacks again, causing Peter’s suit to start to overload. Before it explodes, he tells Haley he thinks he can help her control her speed. Hours later, Peter crawls into MJ’s apartment. Ben Urich is letting MJ write up the story and instead of exposing Haley, Mary Jane tells the story of her father, exonerating him and laying the blame on Oscorp. Peter leaves a copy of The Bugle on Haley’s fire escape…and a suit that will help her regulate her speed.

THOUGHTS: Skan does a fantastic job on the painted covers, bringing an element of both The Flash and Adi Granov’s Iron Man art. The third issue cover captures the feel of the game with Spidey bouncing around. The fourth is a great representation of the Web-Spinner trapped in time and the fifth is probably the most Flash-like as Spidey is racing a speedster. It’s not every day you see the Wall-Crawler sprinting on a cover!

The potential for the “ghost” being supernatural or somehow related to Mysterio is completely dispelled in the third issue as we learn more about Haley. Inheriting powers from her father, one who passed under suspicious circumstances, sets Haley up to have parallels with Peter as she and her mother move to Queens where she attends Midtown High, Peter’s alma mater. This gives Hallum a way for Spidey to connect with Haley later in the story as he sees himself in her and the potential she has to offer the world at large.

At this point in the story, characters’ perceptions get challenged. Mary Jane is aware she’s after a flesh and blood human being and Carla realizes that it was her husband who sought out a reporter to share his story with the world, not someone snooping for sensational tabloid trash. There’s a lot Carla’s not aware of, like Haley skipping school. She’s just a single parent struggling to get by, one who places a lot of trust in her straight-A-student of a daughter. She may not be as overtly worrisome and overprotective as Aunt May, but she and her daughter are wary when it comes to Haley’s secret, and rightfully so. It has quite literally burned them in the past.

Hallum does a great job with Peter’s characterization here-concerned that without Doc Ock he can’t pull off the innovation his suit needs. It’s also important that Spidey tries to reach out to Haley with understanding and no judgement. It’s a characterization that goes all the way back to when Stan Lee wrote the Web-Spinner and Hallum captures it well in this tale. “Hopeless” also once again sets up a decent cliffhanger, as Spidey finds Haley not only attacking MJ, but bursting into flames and running around the room in sheer panic.

Issue #4 was very reminiscent of Flash #91, where Wally West found himself going so fast that he was trapped in a moment of time, having what felt like a relative eternity to solve the problem in front of him as the world was frozen still. As this is the Spidey version, there’s a little more humor injected as befitting the character. Being cut off from human interaction clearly takes a toll on Peter, a guy who already talked to himself frequently. His realization that the test results would take…ten…seconds made me crack up at his newfound impatience. Peter wrecking a lab when the results don’t go the way he wanted them to further illustrates how his isolation is affecting him. Going to the graves of May and Ben was a perfect outlet for him to talk things out as the speed freeze effect would be far less obvious in a cemetery and allow Peter to feel like time is indeed passing.

This sets up the series’ conclusion as Haley wakes up and rushes off to face Spider-Man once again. Using his science smarts, I liked seeing Peter hack into the tvs at Times Square and deliver a message at a frequency only he and Haley could see. It’s another reminder of Peter’s ingenuity. This is a guy who built a velocity suit and is trying to figure out a unique way to communicate. He may not be Reed Richards, but his brain is nothing to sneeze at and I love when writers remember this aspect.

Peter’s identification with Haley reaches fruition as he tries to talk sense into her and relate as they race across the city. There’s an element of suspense as we know Haley could combust and perish like her father did all those years ago. Much like the ending of Spider-Man 2, Spidey gets a little personal to get through to her, but I don’t think he needed to tease her about a cure in the first place. Trying to motivate her into anger to get her to listen didn’t seem like a great plan and felt cruel coming from him. It worked I guess, but we get cheated of seeing how he escapes his suit’s explosion and a cathartic breakthrough from Haley. Instead, Hallum wraps it up with Peter climbing into MJ’s apartment in his advanced suit having no idea if his talk worked as Haley had disappeared. I guess no one came up to him and unmasked him while he was unconscious?

Despite a fumble or two at the end, the final scene with Haley is touching as Spidey bestows upon her a heroic looking costume that will help her control her powers and presumably not burst into flames. He also includes a note, containing some of the wisdom he’s learned along the way. His final line of, “Go be great.” is a smart way to close this mini, echoing the game’s tag line of  “Be greater.”

Laiso’s art has continued to grow on me across the series, despite some faces coming off as lumpy at times. He can certainly stage an action scene and his Spidey is as acrobatic as one would hope. In fact, I’d rather see his work in Amazing than some of the fill-in artists we’ve had of late. Here’s hoping we haven’t seen the last of him around the Spider-Verse!

I probably set my hopes too high on seeing Mysterio more in this series and the apparent destruction of the Velocity suit makes me wonder if it’ll turn up again. Similarly, I have to wonder if Haley will return in another Gamerverse mini. Still, I found a lot to like about this first original series. I think I enjoyed it more than City at War due to the story feeling fresh and not having to be the Cliff Notes version of an excellent game. It’s anyone’s guess how the Black Cat story will fare, but we’ll find out soon, True Believers!

MY GRADE: B

JAVI’S HUH?: Another Ditko-ish Peter lookalike in issue #3. Did Haley time travel to Peter’s high school days to see him get bullied?

Why couldn’t Spidey dodge Swarm’s bees in #4? If everything is practically at a standstill, a guy with Spider-Sense should’ve easily been able to swing around them!