Spider-Man and Batman - Mobile Edition

Back Issues
Spider-Man and Batman
By Geoff Hoppe
January 21, 2007 - 00:29

Marvel Comics
DC Comics
Writer(s): J.M. DeMatteis
Penciller(s): Mark Bagley
Inker(s): Scott Hanna, Mark Farmer

Wow.

Um…I really don’t know what to say. Normally, there’s a eulogy after something this depressing, but I don’t write eulogies. I write reviews.

Spider-Man and Batman is godawful. Unholy bad. There are dioceses, I’m told, where this book is a venial sin. It’s banned on the island of Oahu, Miami-Dade county, and the state of Montana. And yet…there’s nothing fun about it.

There hasn’t ever been a combination of writing this cheesy and penciling this bad. J.M. DeMatteis has taken (arguably) the two most important, intriguing heroes from the two major publishing houses and made them entirely boring. Spider-Man has none of his humor, and Batman comes off as garden variety as Hourman.

The plot could have been interesting: Spider-Man and Batman team up to battle Carnage and Joker. A doctor in Gotham develops a behavior altering chip that she plants in the heads of both Joker and Cletus Kassidy. She promises the chip will remove any criminal urges in both men. Of course, it doesn’t work.

If I were told to team these characters, my first urge would be to play with their psychologies: why is one a wisecracker and one totally humorless? They have similar origins. Where Peter Parker lost a father, however, Bruce Wayne lost both mom and dad. Would Spider-Man have been as grim as Batman if both Aunt May and Uncle Ben had died?

And what about gadgets? Batman has a cave full of them, and Peter Parker created webbing strong enough to hold bridges together at age fifteen. There are countless possibilities to play with here, not to mention the fact that these two characters have, by far, the two best rogues’ galleries in comic book history.

And yet, J.M. DeMatteis does nothing but blather generically about crime, responsibility, decency, blah blah blah…how can one writer single-handedly reduce Marvel’s most resilient superhero to a witless wonder? Spidey seems at a loss for words when fighting the Joker, which could have been interesting, but there’s nothing dramatic about that loss for words. Each panel is packed with meaningless, boring dialogue.

Mark Bagley does a better job in his duties as penciler, but he’s still Mark Bagley, and that’s enough of a problem.

Worth the money? Maybe if the owner of the store is giving them away, or using pages as taco wrappers. And always keep in mind, if your hamster loves superheroes, this is perfect cage lining…