Superior Spider-Man Team-Up #1
Written By: Chris Yost Art By: David LopezA lot of the fun of Superior Spider-Man comes from Otto’s arrogant narration, which is absent for most of this issue. While Superior Spider-Man Team-Up #1′s success doesn’t solely bank on that, it also fails to deliver on the emotional rationalization of Spidey’s friends who want to hunt him down.
This issue’s premise is that the Marvel heroes, mostly Avengers, are fed up with Superior Spider-Man being such a jerk. Much of the entertainment value in the past was seeing these character’s confused and try and piece together “Peter’s” sudden change. But instead, we have boring characterization of characters like Captain America, who just give heartless warnings to Spider-Man, and eventually follows up on them.
Art-wise, Lopez delivers his usual vibrant, loud style, capturing motion and comedy well, in panels like the Doctor Strange office fight (why couldn’t we have more of that?). Another nice comedic touch is Hulk’s grin in the background after smashing Hyperion. The script doesn’t give Lopez much to work with for creative fight scenes, however, so it’s pretty run of the mill action-wise.
Superior Spider-Man Team-Up #1 leaves us with the series premise on the last page, which actually shows some promise. Unfortunately, as a standalone story, this issue did little to develop the impact and toll Otto has on his Avengers pals.