Steel Fist To The Face! — Reviewing ‘Spider-Punk: Arms Race’ #4

What’s more punk than using music and power to take down the establishment? Using a giant mech to do it!

Metal fists, tentacles, and giant guitars are swinging as the action-packed Spider-Punk: Arms Race #4 brings the latest adventure of the Spider-Band to a thunderous conclusion. Prepare for a rocking good time from Cody Ziglar, Justin Mason, Morry Hollowell, and Travis Lanham.

Bet you, yes you, the reader, can guess what is coming. If you’ve been reading my reviews up till now, it’s an easy call. Here we go then.

I flipping love this series.

See, you knew that was coming.

Everything about this book is just amazing, special, fun, powerful, and just a damn good time. It captures the spirit that Spider-books should have, done with it’s own unique flavors. No matter the version, Spider-Man and his variants and colleagues should feel loose but serious at the same time. The weight of the world on their shoulder, but plenty of quips and spirited can-do energy as they fight the fight no matter how stacked against them the deck might be.

Ziglar fully understands that aspect, showcased both by this series and the Miles Morales: Spider-Man book. Finding the ways to tap into each character’s distinct personality/energy and wrapping them up with the best elements of what has defined Spider-Man for decades.

Essentially this issue is just one giant fight scene, but one that packs a giant punch (sorry, not sorry). Just like with Osborn in the previous volume, the characters are taking down a threat to the world that wants to enforce the worst parts of the establishment (but with their own flavor). No matter if it’s their own fists or giant mecha fists, we know and feel what the characters are fighting for and what it means to the world.

Also, it’s just chaotic giddiness of the best kind.

Mason captures all of that on the page, letting the artwork embody all of that but even bolder. Each panel and page is dense, with so much depth and detail. No matter if the panel is wide or tight, things feel real and tangible. Being a big fight scene issue means lots of room to let the panels create true motion from start to finish. Mason’s eye for this is spot on, as every single blow that is landed by the mechs actually can be felt, as if we’re standing in this world watching it ourselves.

Color-wise everything is just so poppy and saturated, as Hollowell lets it all flow. Splashes of pink, orange, yellow, blue and more dominate certain pages making the action around them stand out even more. Plenty of panels eschew the backgrounds so that these massive splashes of color can be the framing device and it just works. It keeps the almost surrealistic feeling of this world, setting it apart from the 616 prime Marvel, front and center. It’s part of the reminder that comic books are visual spectacles that are meant to create worlds familiar but also unfamiliar.

Comic books. They’re fun, folks.

Speaking of fun, the lettering always gets in on that fun too. Because Lanham infuses many of the same things the rest of the artwork does into each bubble or caption on the page. Colors, shifted bubbles, fonts that shift and change, and other elements that really make the words come to true life. SFX that are giving off all that same appeal, loud and clear as they stand in the forefront of what is happening.

Character voices are distinct, letting us keep track even when we can’t visually see the given speaker at the moment. Each thing builds upon the next, living and breathing the spirit of this world.

Marvel, we need an ongoing Spider-Punk series, now! At the very least just keep pumping out these minis, either way with this creative team intact. Let them tell all the stories in this world that they can come up with. We need comic books like this quite a bit.

Spider-Punk: Arms Race #4 is now available from Marvel Comics.