Friday, August 21, 2015

Book Review: Marvel Knights: Spider-Man


Book: Marvel Knights: Spider-Man: Fight Night (issues #1-5) by Matt Kindt with illustration by Marco Rudy and color by Val Staples

Edition: Single print issues

Rating: 4 stars

Review:

Reading this was a bit of a mind trip from the psychedelic artwork to the almost dreamlike/hallucinatory story. But the surprising thing is, I found myself liking it strangely because it was so different. There was even one page with the words in the thought box were backwards and if you're not good at reading backwards you might want to get a mirror.

The story begins with Peter down on his financial luck (yet again), taking a freelance job to take photos but when he showed up to the location his spidey sense immediately went off.

It turns out it was a trap and getting no real help from Madame Web who appeared only to let Peter know he's about to undergo some sort of test which he may not survive. It wasn't long before Spider-Man was soon fighting some of his most notorious villains. It also didn't help that he had been drugged making it hard for him to distinguish whether this was some awful nightmare or he was actually experiencing this ordeal.

The more he found himself tangled up in this story the more it had him reflecting on various things from his Uncle Ben to prior situations he found himself in. He also found out that someone was behind this trap but it's going to take a lot to see him through to the end.

For the artwork, every inch of the page was used, here is an example below. The artwork varied throughout the story in a way it was as if the art mirrored Spider-Man's situation. Everything was unsettling and crazy similar to everything Spider-Man was going through.



Marvel Knights: Spider-Man, felt like I was reading something along the lines of Alice in Wonderland meets Spider-Man. It was a fun and dark read that worked because it wasn't so formulaic and run of the mill.

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