Amazing Spider-Man: Super Hero in Action

Background

Just when I think I'm all done with these Bendon 2012 Amazing Spider-Man Movie Tie-In Colouring & Activity Books, another one creeps out of the woodwork and makes its presence known — like a rat in the ceiling or a leak in the drainage system.

Story Details

Like rats and cockroaches, these books can be hard to distinguish one from the other. This one is called "Super Hero in Action", and features 224 pages. The Spider-Man pose on the cover is subtly different from the umpteen other near-identical movie tie-in activity books from Bendon.

But other than the page count, there's really nothing to distinguish this 224pp version from the 448pp Amazing Spider-Man: Coloring & Activity Book - Birth of a New Hero (Bendon).

This version includes the bonus sheet of "Over 30 Stickers" that has also appeared in a number of other books from this range. The stickers are grungy and unappealing, and feature a tacky range of Spidey slogans in eye-gouging enhanced fonts.

General Comments

Also, the pictures and puzzles are of course exactly the same as those that filled out all the other books in the range. Spidey is scrawny and odd-looking in his 2012 movie costume. Peter Parker makes a few appearances, as does Doctor Curt Connors. Gwen pops into a couple of the images too.

The Lizard even makes a cameo appearance. Given that he's the star villain of the movie, I really don't know why he gets such a low profile in all these books. Probably because he is so badly drawn. Really, Ditko did a better job 50 years ago.

Overall Rating

The world didn't need another Bendon movie tie-in coloring book. And here it is. At $5.99 for 224 pages I suppose it's fair-enough value on a pure page-counting basis.

But honestly, we deserve better than this in terms of variety, characters, art-quality and relevance. I can't give this more than one-and-a-half webs.