Spider-Man Family (Vol. 2) #8 (Story 5)

Background

The Spotted Cat, a thief who can teleport, tried to steal an ancient bug known as the Insect King until Spidey stepped in and stopped her. However, she tricked him by handing over a fake while keeping the original for herself, with other intentions in mind. But, another interested party, Lord Beastius, managed to capture the king for his own dark purposes.

Story 'The Gravity of the Situation'

The Insect King's DNA is being used to make a formula to turn ordinary people into super villain servants of Lord Beastius. The newest creation is the Steel Scarab; a man so fed up with the congestion of Tokyo that he'll use his new gravity powers to flatten it to nothing by creating giant balls of various things. Spider-Man J tries his best to stop him, but only ends up getting caught in the gravity field. It's when he discovers that the bigger the ball the harder it is for Scarab to carry, J forces him to make one so big he's flattened underneath. And though Scarab has failed, Beastius is satisfied with the results of J's test.

General Comments

Not much I can say about this installment that I haven't said about the others; confusing artwork and balloon placement makes it hard to read, it's weird, and manga fans will most likely love it while standard Spidey fans probably won't. While the last two chapters in this story showed some improvement over the mess the original strips were, this one is pretty much back to business as usual. Hopefully this doesn't indicate that the next few chapters will become a "freak of the week" scenario.

Overall Rating

1 Web. This is strictly for manga fans. If you're not one of them, then this probably isn't for you.