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SPIDER-MAN'S TANGLED WEB #7 (Best of the Week!)
"Gentlemen's Agreement Part One"
Highly Recommended (10/10)
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Marvel Comics
Writer: Bruce Jones
Pencils: Lee Weeks
Inks: Josef Rubenstein
Colors: Steve Buccellato
Letters: Comicraft
Editor: Axel Alonso
Price: $2.99 US/$4.50 CAN |
I know the name Bruce Jones, but I haven't put it together with several great comics the way I have with previous Tangled Web authors Garth Ennis, Greg Rucka and Peter Milligan. In my mind, Jones has at least one great comic connected to his name now, though, because the first part of "Gentlemen's Agreement" is a great story, one of the best Tangled Web tales we've gotten so far. Along with artwork by the always impressive
Lee Weeks, Jones has crafted the first part of an intriguing tale that keeps
Spider-Man on the periphery but definitely important to the tale, and has built
up an interesting protagonist and conflict to propel the story.
Jones is known mostly as a
horror writer, but while this story has elements of psychological horror, it's
more of a crime tale. The story flashes back and forth in the life of cabby
Charlie Clemmens, as we see him diagnosed with a fatal disease and taking part
in a crime that somehow revealed one of Spider-Man's biggest secrets to him. The
issue takes its time developing Clemmens as a decent enough guy, but one who
just might give up Spidey's secret to save his own life. However, while
Spider-Man's life would definitely be affected by Clemmens's decision, this is
most definitely a story about Charlie and not about Spider-Man.
Lee Weeks is an artist who
has done some fantastic work, notably on Batman and Spider-Man, and his work
here with inker Rubenstein is top notch. Beautiful and cinematic in the
flashback sequences, gritty and harsh in the real-world sequences, he gives us
the feel of regular people in a super-heroic world. Whether it's a foiled
mugging or failed bank robbery or something as simple as a doctor's visit, the
backgrounds and characters are well-realized and expressive. Lee Weeks is one of
those artists (Steve Lieber is another) who has incredible fundamentals and
storytelling style, and just never gets the recognition that I think he
deserves. Perhaps his work on this story will help to change that.
I knew what to expect from
Weeks, though, so the big surprise here was how much I enjoyed Jones's work. Too
often, "legendary" writers start to lose their luster as times roll on (see
Byrne, Claremont, etc.) and I was worried that Jones might not have the same
power that he had in his heyday. However, this story is worthy of some of my
favorite writers like Greg Rucka or Brian Michael Bendis, with really nice
interplay between Charlie and his ex-wife or Charlie and his doctors. There are
also more than a few mysteries here, such as what's really going on with
Clemmens's son or how he discovered Spider-Man's identity in the first place.
Tangled Web may be a Spider-Man book, but it is slowly becoming a defacto crime comic from Marvel, and fans who are reading Powers and 100 Bullets
definitely shouldn't miss this book.
Email Randy Lander comments about this review. |
