Amazing Spider-Man: Spider-Versity #2: Survival 101

The Amazing Spider-Man: Spider-Versity #2 is a book caught trying to be two things at once. At its core, this title is an all-ages superhero romp meant to explore the superhero team dynamic in a way relatable to younger readers. Characterization is a mess in this issue, as it ages down heroes who’ve been around long enough not to need the “Teen Team” treatment, with its writing mostly straying away from any sort of conflict between the spiders. If this were one of Marvel’s YA graphic novel releases, it would hit its intended audience much harder, with more room to breathe and play around with its lighter tone.

Instead, this is being released as a sister project to The Amazing Spider-Man, and as such is also trying to build off the darker character developments in that title to service this one. The coming of Carnage and Norman’s continued battle with the darkness inside him play a crucial part in the framing of this story, which makes its issues with characterization all the more difficult to swallow.

Miles, Cindy, and Gwen are being written as though they’ve been aged down significantly. With Cindy, this is especially frustrating because she is Peter’s age and has struggled to maintain relevancy as her own character in recent years, so much so that pushing her onto this team has further sanitized her character into being a mannequin for Marvel to hang a superhero suit on and sell toys of. Miles and Gwen are less affected by this due to their prominence in other titles, but they’re still cut down significantly in order to fit the shape of this book’s gimmick. Poor Anya didn’t even get this treatment, as she’s been pushed into the background as decoration to fill action scenes with, having no real presence in the story.

Now, this could get a pass if the actual writing carried some sort of thematic or emotional weight. However, this issue deliberately goes out of its way to cut the line on developing this team as a team. We skip over any conflict of personality, having them complete their first mission as a unit in flawless fashion, furthering Norman as the main point of conflict in this title until Carnage finally takes center stage. It’s boring, in all honesty, to see these characters reduced to action figures that fail to run into any conflict with one another.

That being said, the art and action in this issue are quite well illustrated. The art team balances out a pretty crowded fight between the team and a group of rogue Spider-Slayers in a way that leaves the compositions full of life without the art itself ever getting too busy to follow. There are some solid beats of comedy in here between Norman and Jess that are charming on a script level, but are really given life by the team’s ability to imbue cartoonish expression without breaking the issue’s tone.