Punching Fascists Has Never Been So Punk-Rock Before: Reviewing ‘Spider-Punk’

For every Spider-Man or member of the X-Men or Avenger that has caught on at Marvel, tons more characters didn’t. Giant swaths of characters who appeared only once or a handful of times before vanishing. Some were lucky to pop back up many years later when a writer remembered they existed and got a second chance at life. Some are just waiting for the right moment or creative team to give them their big break while others make a debut and keep popping up until they get their own book.

In this case that would perfectly describe one Hobart “Hobie” Brown the multiversal figure known as Spider-Punk.

After appearing in 2014’s Spider-Verse event, Spider-Punk has been involved with most Spider-Man multiversal-centric stories. Now it’s his turn to really shine alongside his bandmates in a story in his own universe. As a series Spider-Punk is just a perfectly crafted example of pure comic book fun wrapped around a powerful timely message: we have the power to topple fascism/Nazism.

Before getting a shot at taking over and relaunching the Miles Morales: Spider-Man series, which is fantastic and a must-read, Cody Ziglar cut his teeth on quite a few Spider-related series (including working as part of a team on Amazing Spider-Man) with this series highlighting why he was tapped for his own series with such wonderful storytelling and character developing talents. This is a world that I would gladly revisit with this creative team, as many times as they want.

Everything flows so smoothly and quickly, the dialogue and quips and such hitting in rapid-fire but with enough emotion and weight that they all stick and have an impact. Ziglar mixes the more fun elements and the heavier topics in a way that neither feels short-changed nor devalued. There is a youthful attitude that feels like it might leap off the page and get right up in your face, and I love that. One of the best things though is the fact that the entire main cast is made of heroic characters of color. We do not get enough books that take the effort to give us casts like this and getting one this fun and powerful is the best.

Even when issues of the series become super action-heavy, there are tons of great character moments sprinkled with emotional moments and comedy and heroes doing the stuff that we love to see. Ziglar balances it all so easily, bouncing between the moments without it feeling disjointed or overwhelming, or unnecessary at any point. I’ve loved superheroes since the moment I learned about them and have been reading comic books almost my entire life. Even at this point in my life the moment I can come across a comic like this that is powerful and inspiring and feels so real, it makes me so darn happy that this is a medium that I fell in love with so many years ago.

None of this is possible without the wonderous work that Justin Mason and Jim Charalampidis pulled off in this series. While Ziglar has to juggle one part of fitting all these varying types of moments into the story, they’re tasked with bringing them to bright colorful powerful life. Mason has such a smooth and fun style that is perfect for a musical/punk-style story as this, hitting all the right emotional notes and making it all feel even bigger than it appears to be. I mean, he did a whole darn six-page spread kicking off the huge battle that I would love to buy a large poster of to put across my whole wall.

Along with that, the choices that are made with the paneling on any given page are just so good. They shift and change depending on what the page needs, going from a pretty standard type of paneling to ones that are angled or shifted around, popping out of others, and more. Making use of white/negative space is one of my favorite paneling aesthetics, and it works so well here. There are a lot of visceral action sequences where blows can be felt because of how they are framed or because of the choice to switch to silhouette to really hit home what happened. Much of that is also aided by the well-placed and right-in-the-thick-of-things SFX that are found across the pages.

Boosting it all as well are the really bold but also muted colors, giving us bright pops of green or blue or other colors while also making them shadowy for added weight and depth. This leaves room for the panels and pages where those bright swaths of color take over and become the background to really highlight a moment of action or a character close-up or other imagery.

Norman Osborn loomed over this series from the start, both figuratively and literally (thanks to a statue and the real Osborn) and Charalampidis really drives that home with a specific coloring choice. Green and Osborn always go together because of the whole Green Goblin thing, and some might just put subtle hints of green here or there. This book is not and should not be subtle, and Charalampidis is not as numerous panels and pages deeper in the story begin to be bathed in the brightest neon-line green that can be found, from lighting sources or just a tinge to a panel or even in the attacks on some of the characters.

It makes us feel Osborn’s presence no matter if he’s on the page or not, almost like a visual representation of how there is ominous music in games or movies before the big villain or boss pops out. There are even pages after the Osborn reveal where the blue fades and colors are more mixed as the heroes fight back, but as they start to lose and get taken down the green ramps right back up, perfectly.

Comics like these are popping with energy from every angle, down to the letters on the page. Travis Lanham brings it all time and time again, matching the colorful and powerful energy the rest of the book is giving off. From making sure that we know what any given moment’s tone/volume should be (through big giant letters or smaller normal-sized or even smaller fonts), to the beauty of having the heroes’ bubbles be white and the villains being slightly less white almost yellowish color. Lanham’s letters play with colors too as we have the bright red bold coloring added to certain words, giving them a punch-like emphasis.

All the font is also jagged and slanted to give it a different flavor than we normally see which fits the whole punk/different feeling for this series. All of that is found in the aforementioned SFX too, making sure that there isn’t a way you can miss these big bold sounds that are connected to the person, action, or object in question.

Spider-Punk is now available as a collected edition from Marvel Comics.