Writer: Dan Slott
Penciler: Jim Cheung
Inker: John Dell
Color Artist: Justin Ponsor
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramanga
Reviewed by: Deanna Chapman (@deeechap)
Spoilers ahead!
Dead No More: The Clone Conspiracy #1 is the latest Spider-Man crossover event. The crossover spans through this series, Amazing Spider-Man, Prowler, and Silk. It remains to be seen how crucial it will be to follow all four. Despite not reading the previous ASM issues that lead up to this event, it was not as confusing as you’d think. Dead No More picks up in a place where you can piece together the bigger picture of what’s happening. There’s also a mini-story at the end of the comic titled “The Night I Died,” which revolves around the death of Gwen Stacy. Dan Slott writes both the main story and this one, along with writing ASM.
Spider-Man is a character who’s been written by many different people. Some may prefer Bendis over Slott or vice versa for the recent Spidey stories. However, this looks like it will make for an interesting take on the clones. We already see Peter’s spider-senses going off when he meets with Jerry Salteres in the hospital after he has a cutting edge procedure done. His senses will typically go off when clones are around, but we see later in the issue that they don’t with Gwen.
There’s not a ton of plot advancement in this issue, but it brings in the clones in a nice, neat way. The penciling by Jim Cheung is wonderful and works well with the dark tones that John Dell and Justin Ponser muster up for the story. With “The Night I Died,” we get a much different tone with Ron Frenz drawing. John Dell and Edgar Delgado team up on this and you can see the stark difference. Both are great in their own regards.
With such a long history, Spider-Man is a hard character to continue to write and develop (at least, I’m assuming he is). This creative team can do something great with the clones in this crossover and make it enjoyable to read. This is just the start, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out over four different titles. This is not an event on the scale of Civil War II, but for Spider-Man, it could be a big one.
Verdict: Check it out. Spider-Man is a character people will always have varying opinions about, so it’s really up to you to decide if this event is something you’ll want to follow. Personally, I find this story intriguing, and I’ve always been a fan of the character. Give it a chance and you may be surprised.
