Spider-Man: Arachnis Project #1

Background

The Jury has previously appeared in the Venom Lethal Protector series and the Trial by Jury arc in the Amazing Spider-Man title.

Story 'Ties That Bind!'

The Jury is attacking Venom and after a difficult battle they manage to stun him and are prepared to kill him when he awakens and takes the guys down escaping to somewhere else.

Styx and Stone are attempting to rob a bank when Spider-Man busts in and stops them. When the bank owners are thanking him they offhandedly mention a crime wave in Washington D.C. and Stone mentions that it is being run by a secret society.

Meanwhile at Washington D.C. a teacher named Mr. Mikashi assigns one of his slacker students to be tutored after school. After class two men in suits visit Mr. Mikashi and ask him about a “project”. Later when the student arrives to be tutored he sees that there is some sort of Arachnis Project disc on Mikashi’s computer, the two men in suits kill him immediately.

Spider-Man considers visiting D.C. to help with the crime wave but when he hears that his old Professor Mr. Mikashi is accused of murder he goes to D.C. right away (literally one panel later).

Spider-Man finds out that Mikashi has been cleared of murder and he stumbles across Sneak Thief, essentially a red-headed black cat, stealing a priceless Ming vase. He webs her up. A muscle bound man with numerous guns busts in to kill Sneak Thief and Spider-Man. Suddenly an even bigger muscle bound man with numerous guns busts in and threatens to kill all of them.

General Comments

This issue is a mess. There is a lot of negative but I’ll start with the positive first. I liked the coloring, and the inking in the book was pretty solid as well. There was some clever dialogue in this issue as well specifically between Styx and Stone and Spider-Man and Sneak Thief.

However, this issue had some awful pacing and a good few plot holes. I’m not the biggest fan of Venom but I know the character deserved to be treated better in this issue. His only line was and I quote “WAAAGRRHHH”. The art was incredibly inconsistent! While in some panels it was great in others I couldn’t tell what was going on.

Over the course of two panels and a splash page Spidey gets to D.C. with almost zero explanation how he got there. The final scene of the book had to be the worse out of them all. It made me groan. Audibly. It was very 90’s in the bad way.

Overall Rating

While the issue didn't openly destroy continiuty or insult long time fans it was still inexcusably bad. So one star. Thanks for reading!