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SPIDER-MAN'S TANGLED WEB #6
"Flowers for Rhino Part One: Cornucopia"
Recommended (8/10)
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Marvel Comics
Writer: Peter Milligan
Artist: Duncan Fegredo
Colors: Steve Buccellato
Letters: Comicraft
Editor: Axel Alonso
Price: $2.99 US/$4.50 CAN |
Mixing the science fiction classic "Flowers for Algernon" with Spider-Man's foe the Rhino has yielded some interesting fruit, although I guess I shouldn't be surprised given the strength of the creative team. The conclusion of "Flowers for Rhino" is funny and clever, exactly the kind of thing I'd like to see more of in Tangled Web. Watching Rhino's intelligence slowly
increase was a lot of fun, and the ultimate destination of his journey into
greater intelligence may have been inevitable, but that didn't make it any less
of a perfect ending. While it's a tad on the predictable side, overall I found
the story to be amusing and well-thought-out.
I don't often find words of wisdom in gaming material, but I remember a GURPS product noting that
sometimes it's less painful to be stupid. This is the lesson for Rhino here,
along with the time-honored "be grateful for what you have" as his intelligence
increase at first wins him everything he thought he wanted but eventually turns
out to have a downside. Readers of "Flowers for Algernon" will be pleased to
know that the story doesn't go in exactly that direction, so there are some
surprises here, but Milligan's side effects for the intelligence-increasing
operation are no less sad than the ones in that story.
In addition to being an exploration of who
Rhino is and what makes him a successful character, this story does let him get
in a few long-awaited revenge shots. He gets to make a fool of Spider-Man for
once, get the girl and play the mastermind rather than the flunky to the
mastermind. Seeing him develop into a completely different character, and
watching his inner monologue change along with his intelligence, was quite
interesting to watch. I thought Milligan did a nice job of conveying the
shifting of his intelligence in a slow and believable way, all the while
including gentle mocking of the concept, with such cute gags as Rhino arrogantly
rewriting Shakespeare or unknowingly realizing the difference between infer and
imply.
On the art side, Fegredo's work was really
nice as always. The battle scene with Spider-Man was a little too confusing, and
I once again was disappointed in Buccellato's heavy coloring, but Fegredo does a
nice job shifting from Rhino's grunt-work style to his more sophisticated
persona. Surprisingly, I most enjoyed the work when Fegredo was showing Rhino at
his destructive best, particularly near the end when the glee his work was
giving him was so evident.
Though perhaps not as impressive as "Severance Package," this was a damn sight better than Ennis's weak "The Thousand" and bodes well for future offerings from Tangled Web.
Email Randy Lander comments about this review. |
