Amazing Spider-Man: Jumbo Colouring Book (Scholastic Australia)

Background

Scholastic Australia have laid their hands on a pool of Spider-Man (& other Marvel) artwork, and have a licence to produce colouring & activity books for the Australia/NZ market. They do not intend to let this opportunity go to waste.

Story Details

Despite having already printed every single piece of artwork they possess, Scholastic continue to squeeze a bit more out of the franchise they hold. This book is a conventional 8.5" x 10.5" book with glossy soft card square bound cover.

Inside are 96 pages of artwork which recycle for the umpteenth time the same material that has been sliced, diced, packaged and re-packaged previously in all of their Spider-Man colouring and activity books since 2011.

The difference this time is the sheer page count. At 96 pages, these book doesn't "sample" the Scholastic/Parragon artwork pool... it utterly drains it. Every single Spider-Man related page they posses has been placed into this book. There's also what appears to be some "refactored" material, where key characters have been cropped out of other images, magnified, and placed into their own pictures just to meet the page count.

General Comments

Don't get me wrong. This is actually an excellent book. The artwork is clean and high-quality. The production quality is good too. The design of the front cover is fresh and has good impact.

The page count is high. The paper is high-density white stock, rather than thick fuzzy newsprint, so while the book isn't particularly thick, it does have a hefty feel that belies its slender profile.

Overall Rating

I'm utterly fed up with seeing these same damn images over and over again every time I pick up a Spidey colouring book up from the shelves here in New Zealand.

But to be fair, as a standalone offering, this merits decent rating — so I can't find it within me to give it anything less than a "competent but utterly unoriginal" Three Webs.