Ultimate Spider-Man: Travel Activity Pad (Crayola)

Background

This coloring and activity book from Crayola is based on the Ultimate Spider-Man TV (2012) show.

The format and structure is identical to the earlier Spider-Sense Spider-Man: Travel Activity Pad (Crayola), but the book has been re-illustrated to correlate with the TV show heroes and villains.

Story Details

This 2013 "Ultimate" version is physically identical to its "Spider-Sense" sibling from the preceding year. There are 32 black and white 8" x 11.4" pages inside a staple-bound cardboard cover. A resealable plastic storage tray inset into the cover holds 7 felt-tip pens (red, yellow, green, blue, grey, brown, black). There's no purple, so let's just hope that Hulk or Green Goblin don't appear inside.

Inside you'll find join-the-dots, spot-the-difference, tic-tac-toe, a couple of mazes, a number puzzle, and... lots of good old-fashioned coloring pages.

General Comments

There's no story at all (not even captions to the pictures) and no attempt at characterization. Each page is simple a stand-alone feature. I guess that's probably the safe and easy option with a coloring book - just stick to the basics.

And in terms of the basics, Crayola has done just fine. The art work is clean and tidy. Spider-Man predominates, but there's plenty of guest appearances from Power Man, Doc Ock, Lizard, White Cat, Nova, and Iron Fist. Spidey also gets some variety when he turns up on his Spider-Cycle, with a jet-pack, and with his symbiote costume.

Overall Rating

Production quality is high throughout. And most importantly... all of these images are new for this book. Unlike some coloring book companies (e.g. Bendon, Parragon, Scholastic, Paradise) that take the same images and churn out three dozen activity books with basically the same content, Crayola tends to show a little restraint with their re-use of material.

Despite the relatively high price-tag, I'm going to give this one an above-average 3.5 Webs rating.