OK, I wasn't wild about the six-part Arana origin story that unfolded last year in Amazing Fantasy, but it was my hope that with the setup behind us, the storytelling would get stronger. After all, Marvel seems to have really gotten behind this property, and I hoped the strength the publisher saw in it would eventually emerge. Maybe it will, but it hasn't happened yet. This new first issue suffers from the same kind of vagueness that hindered the Amazing Fantasy scripts.
Anya Corazon is now fully immersed in her role as WebCorps' new hunter, Arana, AKA the Spider. Miguel, her mage partner and mentor, decides she's ready to undertake a mission. It's a minor one, involving a corrupt judge who's been feeding "court information" (what the hell does that mean?) to the nihilistic Sisterhood of the Wasp. There's just a couple of problems... Anya's got a cold, which is making her armor go haywire, and the mission isn't quite as simple and routine as Miguel had hoped.
Cruz's art suits the high-energy tone of the property pretty well, and he certainly captures the alien, monstrous and fluid look of the carapace armor nicely. Overall, his line art is pretty standard stuff, and influences such as anime styles and Todd McFarlane's work are evident. The strongest visual in the book is a full-page splash toward the end of the issue in which we really see why Anya has taken to the costumed-hero role so easily: it makes her feel alive, makes her feel special. Her contentment is clear on her face, and the views she's able to enjoy now are lovely.
OK, Anya's otherworldly carapace gives her amazing powers, including some super-strength. Yet in a scene in which she's not using the carapace, she bends iron bars in a fence with her bare hands. Furthermore, the bullet-proof carapace protects her arms and face, but leaves her midriff bare? She gets swarmed by a legion of men of black, and while she's blinded, she can use a store-bought spider-grappling hook and line to get out of harm's way? What's going on here? What are her powers? Furthermore, Miguel is always throwing himself into the action, and he seems to have plenty of powers of his own, enough to handle just about any situation, it would seem. I realize there's a pseudo-spiritual doctrine guiding the WebCorps operation, but its goals and its need for Anya is not at all evident here.
Another awkward moment in the script comes when the heroine learns that the case she and Miguel just handled is connected to the story her reporter father is working on for his newspaper. I like the notion of Anya worrying about her new secret life crossing over into her father's, but the coincidence here is just too big a pill to swallow. This isn't the Silver Age; that sort of plotting doesn't fly anymore. Surely, a reporter her father knows could have been working on such a story; that might have been easier to accept. 3/10
