Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham #5: That’s All Folks!!!!

This last issue of Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham is by far the best issue of the series. By no coincidence, it’s also the funniest. Writer Zeb Wells makes a wise choice (in my opinion) by giving the Spider-Ham/Spider-Man dynamic the back seat and focusing primarily on Spider-Ham. This issue pits Spider-Ham against Mojo! Yeah, I know he’s usually an X-Men villain, but he is absolutely perfect for this story. It really couldn’t happen with anybody else, and Wells’ uses that to his advantage here by coming up with some great legit laugh out loud moments. Not to be out down by his humor, Wells puts together a well-constructed, well-thought-out story that brings the series to a logical and really satisfying end. And it wouldn’t be a comic book if it didn’t feature a “to be continued..” on the last page. As a whole, this mini has had its ups and downs, I wasn’t really a big fan of the Spider-Man/Spider-Ham team-up stuff, their interactions were just sort of…off. It didn’t really matter because once they got to Spider-Ham’s world, it really flowed well from there.

The art by Will Robson is very well done this issue, as it has been the whole series. Robson has to draw funny animals as well as “real” comic book characters and he blends them seamlessly. He doesn’t quite capture the style of the original Spider-Ham artist Mark Armstrong, but I don’t think he should or want to. Times change and so should comics. Robson is an artist whose work is immediately rewarding, because of his lack of straight-on camera shots. The perspective is either from slightly higher or lower or from the left or right. He’s also not afraid to really wander around the page and he doesn’t feel he has to stick to traditional panels at all, which is refreshing. Very well done work on the creative teams part.