Non-Stop Spider-Man #1: Welcome to the Full-Tilt Club (SPOILER-FREE ADVANCED REVIEW)

It’s not every week that you get a new Spider-Man series. And it’s even rarer still that a company is able to draw someone back in who’s moved on from the comics industry, both of those facts lead up to the fact that this book is pretty special before it even hits the shelves this Wednesday, now add to that the fact that TWO legendary artists have drawn the book and this book is basically a unicorn. I big red and blue unicorn with webs on it. 

So, author Joe Kelly is back from Hollywood and he’s got some Spider-Man stories that he wants to tell. I’ll be honest, Joe Kelly’s DC work? Not a huge fan. His humor and rapid-fire dialogue just didn’t really cut it for me there, but when he writes Marvel books, he hits a sweet spot that few authors hit. This book, thankfully, is no different. The story in this issue is told through flashbacks and for real, that’s one of my least favorite ways to tell a story, but Kelly makes it work here. One of the elements of this story is very sobering, and not a pleasant subject, and Kelly in no way downplays that, but he manages to not let it weigh the story down and get too serious. It’s still Spidey, which means fun and lots of action. You could even say that the action is non-stop. Very solid book when it comes to the story/writing.

Who doesn’t love artist Chris Bachalo? Okay, everybody doesn’t love everyone, I get it, but when Bachalo draws Spidey he changes almost everything about his style, You get panels that are very cinematic in nature, you get some great characters that are slightly blurred to make them appear as if they’re in motion (it works!) and some elements of one-panel smash into others, like Bachalo’s pencil, is Godzilla on a rampage, unable to be stopped. Inker Tim Townsend gets pretty heavy with the inks, but only where they need to be, and that gives the book a whole different feel from 90% of the other books on the stands. 

I’m really looking forward to following this series. It’s got a really good creative team, and hopefully, they’ll both be sticking around for a while.