The Spider #15

By David Liss, Ivan Rodriguez & Vinicius Andrade

The latest issue of The Spider is one of the most jarring yet. Richard Wentworth usually makes some harsh and rash decisions but after losing his father’s company, Wentworth Industries, to the irritating villain known as The Fly, The Spider has gone off the deep end.

First off this issue seems a bit rushed to tie up loose ends from previous issues, while phasing into this new arc. Now that Richard Wentworth has lost everything he quickly takes to drinking away his problems and then decides to make some kneejerk decisions as The Spider and ends up taking more lives than The Spider normally would. While The Spider/Richard slowly descends into bottle after bottle of depression, a criminal gang leader known as The Red Hand is slowly taking over the city. Even though half of this issue feels hurried the other half involving the introduction of The Red Hand and the takeover of Wentworth Industries does play out fine and sets up the next storyline quite well.

The art for this issue has been quite consistent with the rest of the series. Ivan Rodriguez does a great job of keeping the issue looking stable and even though the story itself reads a tad bit hasty, the art helps slow that down and keep things moving as leisurely as it can. The Fly was one of the most annoyingly designed and written characters ever, so this new villain The Red Hand actually looks much more dangerous and threatening to The Spider in the long run. Whereas The Fly really didn’t have much of an overall master plan, The Red Hand is a serious businessman who sees an opportunity to use The Spider’s newest drunken revenge spree to his advantage to turn the city against The Spider, and then get free reign over all the crime in the city.

Overall this issue of The Spider had a few ups and downs, but the introduction of The Red Hand and Richard/The Spider suffering from losing everything including his composer and most of his allies, really leaves an interesting but bleak outlook for The Spider. Hopefully Richard will get himself together before he ends up behind bars or worse, dead.