Amazing Spider-Man: Coloring & Activity Book - A Tangled Web (Bendon)

Background

Bendon currently have a licence to print Spider-Man colouring and activity books in the U.S.A., and they're pretty keen to use it. Here's one of the seven or so books they produced as tie-ins to the 2012 Amazing Spider-Man movie.

This one is quite notable for it's crazy-paving die-cut edges.

Story Details

Even the clean-cut non-square edges don't seem to be enough of a gimmick for this book... it also features silvery holo-sparkle highlights on the cover!

Inside are 64 oddly-shaped pages of line-art on plain white paper. The pages are serrated near the spine so they will tear-out easily.

The contents include the same mix of puzzles, games and colouring pages that are present in all the Bendon 2012 Spider-Man movie tie-in colouring/activity books. As in, the exact same pages... pretty much all the content from Amazing Spider-Man: Activity Book - Arachnid Attack! (Bendon) also appears here, just with crinkle-cut edges.

There's also one sheet of the exact same stickers as the other books in the series. As I've mentioned elsewhere, these stickers are disappointingly small, and the images are cramped even further by the addition of slogans like "Hang Time", and "A Greater Good". The designer of the stickers clearly wasn't much of a Spider-Man fan... there's not even any reference to Thwipp! or "Great Responsibility".

General Comments

The Lizard (in his part-lizard/part-man form) actually manages to appear in a couple of the drawing/puzzle pages. He also gets a cameo on a few stickers. But really, this book is all about Spider-Man and Peter Parker.

There's no plot or continuity inside the book - just a steady stream of well-meaning puzzles, games, and pages to colour in.

Overall Rating

The stickers are small and overworked.

The puzzles are all well-meaning, although there's a slightly tired feeling to them. Whoever created them was clearly being paid for doing a job. I can feel no sense of passion or artistic endeavour emanating from these mass-produced pages.

For an asking price of only US$3.49, the book isn't particularly overpriced. But still, I'm reluctant to offer it any sort of positive rating.

Two-and-a-half webs.