Amazing Spider-Man: A Greater Good (Bendon)

Background

This set of four Bendon books came out as tie-ins with the 2012 "Amazing Spider-Man" movie. The four books "A Greater Good", "Hang Time", "Arachnid Abilities" and "Spidey Strikes" all follow the same format, the same ISBN, the same die-cut template, and damn near the same content.

Story Details

These books are 4.8" x 8.5" and feature 8 pages made of the same hard cardboard which is used for front and back cover. With inside front and inside back covers being used for content, that means they offer five double-page spreads.

Every one of those five spreads features minor variations of the same photograph. Specifically, photographic shots of an actor wearing the Spider-Man outfit from the 2012 Amazing Spider-Man movie. All of the shots have dark illustrated backgrounds. Furthermore they all feature the same motion blurring, and the same high-contrast night-time lighting.

There are two single exceptions to this rule: in "Spidey Strikes!" there are two pictures which feature the Lizard. Except for that, there are no other wide shots, no other villain shots, no daytime shots, no Peter Parker shots. Just the same costume in the same lighting, over and over again.

Furthermore, with the exception of those two captions "Dr. Connors experimented with Lizard DNA and something went terribly wrong!" and "The Lizard rushes out of his sewer to face Spider-Man" on the aforementioned lizard shots, the remainder of the text content is utterly generic, and covers the same basic bullet points again and again:

• Spider-Man got his powers from a spider bite.
• Spider-Man goes out at night into the city to fight crime.
• His webbing, speed, strength are useful.
• His powers help him fight crime.
• Because of his great responsibility.

General Comments

Honestly, there's as much complexity in this book as in your average One Direction poster, and that's before you try and spread it across four books!

Overall Rating

Never has so much been attempted with so little.

Half a web.