Amazing Spider-Man: Hero of New York (Bendon)

 Posted: Jun 2015
 Staff: The Editor (E-Mail)

Background

Bendon Publishing have held the right to produce Spider-Man coloring books for quite some time. When the 2012 "Amazing Spider-Man" movie was released, Bendon abused the heck out of that right to produce a flood of marginally indistinguishable "activity book" products.

Each of those products featured essentially the same ugly internal artwork with minor external variations in the external appearance of each book. This "Hero of New York" was part of that embarrassing cut-and-paste exercise.

Story Details

  Amazing Spider-Man: Hero of New York (Bendon)
Summary: 32pp, Sticker Sheet Insert, 4 Crayons

Specifically, this colouring and activity book is 8" x 10.5". It contains 32 black and white line-art pages with illustrations to colour, plus various "activities". There are four crayons in a plastic blister pack on the front of the book.

Stapled into the centre of the book is a single sheet of stickers. This is the same sheet of stickers which appears in several of the other books from this series.

General Comments

Like all of the other books in this series, the artwork is unattractive and the activities exhibit no imagination or effort at all on the part of the designers. The stickers are downright awful, and contain no real connection with Spider-Man other than the text.

The front cover features one of the half-dozen virtually indistinguishable Spider-Man promo shots that have been used, re-used and re-re-used in the marketing tie-ins.

As perhaps you can tell, I am utterly sick to death of the dead-horse-flogging that Bendon has shamelessly performed. I daren't express my honest opinion of their so-called "creative" team because I'm trying to maintain the PG rating for the site. But seriously, have they no shame at all?

Overall Rating

I'm gonna give One Web for the Crayons, which are the only decent thing about this book. They're chunky and bright, contained in a handy resealable plastic pouch on the front. They truly are excellent crayons.

 Posted: Jun 2015
 Staff: The Editor (E-Mail)