REVIEW: Spider-Gwen #26: Not the Strongest Strand in the Web

Initially the concept of Gwenom seemed interesting, butÂ Spider-Gwen #26Â gave me flashbacks to Spider-Man 3 and an emo Tobe Maguire badly disco dancing down the street. Jason Latour“s script failed to keep up with the plot setups in the first part of this arc last issue. Not much really seems to happen and having the symbiote just seems to make you a moody emo kid. Â Unless the story gets interesting again I may have to slip out of this web until the next arc and see what happens.

We get emo whining to a young alternate Reed Richards, which leads Gwen to finally find and confront Cindy Moon in the SHIELD facility she is imprisoned in. Â After little Reed circumvents SHIELD security we get to what should be the action of the issue as Spider-Gwen confronts Cindy Moon, but instead we just get a pointless conversation. We get another shot at some action when Gwen then finds Felicia Hardy locked in the same SHIELD prison, but nothing comes of that either except another very emo conversation. Felicia sounds defeated and wallows in her fate.

The book does maintain its quality in the art department. Â Robbie Rodriguez takes a slow-paced story and at least makes it visually appealing. Â His Gwenom looks great and the colors of Rico Renzi make the mood around the symbiote ominous and continues to give Gwen“s world a unique look and style. The art team work well together and their work seems to really compliment each other. Â Rodriguez“s penciling and inking style leaves a lot of freedom for Renzi“s colors to help establish mood and also a pretty cool noir feel.

VC“s Clayton Cowles uses his lettering to make the different settings in Gwen“s world feel unified and like they belong in the same world despite looking and feeling very different from each other. Letterer’s tend to get overlooked, but it“s a complex art form.

Hopefully this issue was just a pause in the action and things will ramp back up next issue. Â Not only was there a lack of any real action or impact it was actually kind of depressing. There does however seem to be some hope of action ahead and this may have just been a means to get there. I am going to give Spider-GwenÂ another issue or two and hope things improve and I get caught in Spider-Gwen“s web.

Story: 2
Art: 4
Overall Rating: 3

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(W) Jason Latour (A/CA) Robbi Rodriguez