Amazing Spider-Man: Colouring & Sticker Book - Sticking Around (Bendon)

Background

As a tie-in with the 2012 Amazing Spider-Man Movie, U.S. Publisher "Bendon Publishing International, Inc." produced a great pile of coloring and activity books.

Unfortunately, while their range included a wide variety of names and sizes, they were all based on the same meagre set of a few-dozen different pieces of art. Worse, with only a few exceptions, those pictures consisted of countless minor variations of Spider-Man swinging against a building backdrop, plus a few different Lizard poses, and a smattering of illustrations of Peter, of Gwen, and of Doctor Connors.

This "Sticking Around: Finish the Picture With Stickers" at least tries to vary the monotony with a gimmick.

Story Details

Specifically, this book is 8" x 10.5", staple-bound with 32 black and white "easy-tear-out" pages.

And while it contains the same insipid and hidebound set of art as all the other Bendon movie books, it does include a sheet of stickers stapled into the center. Those stickers are designed to be placed at specific points in some of the colouring pages. The final result is the part of the page is bright, professional sticker, while the rest is your own pencil or felt-pen coloring-in.

General Comments

The stickers are placed in some funny places. Have you always wanted to color a Spider-Man picture... except for his left leg? Well, now is your chance. The sticker of Lizard's grinning toothed mouth is the most unusual of the lot, and the "before" picture with his gummy, toothless face is decidedly disturbing.

Yes, this is certainly a distinguishing factor from other books in the series. But I'm far from convinced that it will improve the final result. Maybe "mediocre" was best left alone in this case?

Overall Rating

It's a well-intentioned effort. But the underlying pool of mediocre artwork gets things off to a bad start, and the mish-mash of styles in the final result doesn't improve matters.

On the other hard, it's hard to be too harsh, since the asking price was only $2.99. So let's settle for a disappointing but not utterly unforgivable "Two Web" rating.