Web of Spider-Man (Vol. 1) #108

Story Details

The sand-mass has formed into a figure called Sandstorm after joining with one of the people on the project - Tony Trainer. Spidey, Quicksand and Sandman struggle to contain him/her/it. There's a lot of soupy-sand scenes where the three sandy characters all meld into each other and you can't really see what's going on.

Jonah somehow gets on to ESU's roof, where Marla is too. They slip and fall in all the chaos and Robbie and Betty also show up - on the roof - to drag them to safety.

Spider-Man and co end up victorious and Sandman goes to help Tony get to the hospital. Jonah re-hires Betty and, somehow, blames everything on Spider-Man.

General Comments

Both these books have mini-Cardiac stories at the back. This trend, following on from the three Nightwatch stories in the past three issues, are becoming highly annoying. You buy a Spider-Man book to read about SPIDER-MAN. How hard is that to comprehend?

After that, well the Betty/Robbie scenario was rushed to ridiculous proportions after a slow-ish build-up before that. The end project wasn't even that particularly satisfying, either. Jonah blaming everything on Spider-Man is ridiculous. I know he's slightly one-dimensional in his views on heroes but that's no reason to forget the last 30 years of character development.

Jonah/Marla/Robbie and Betty all being on the roof is a pretty dumb plot device too - how they get there during the sand fight is anyone's guess.

Overall Rating

Usually I'd give this a 0.5 but, somehow, this seems OK for Kavanagh. In other words, it's not as bad as some of his stuff. That doesn't make it 'average', however, let alone 'good'.