WRITER: ZEB WELLS | ARTIST: WILL ROBSON | PUBLISHER: MARVEL | FORMAT: SINGLE ISSUE | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Everyone loved Spider-Ham in Into the Spider-Verse. If you didn’t, then you probably haven’t seen it. Or don’t have a sense of humour. Or heart. Or brain. Or all three. But to give him his own comic? With an ongoing story across several issues? Is this wise? Can a joke be stretched too thin? [He’s been around since 1983! Why are these questions?! – Ed]
On the evidence of this debut issue, the answers are mostly yes with a bit of no (with a bit of both to the last question – not the one from the editor, though). This reviewer genuinely laughed out loud at the Garfieldy illustrations and frank insanity of the one-page origin story at the opening of the comic. Although the art becomes a bit sharper and the gags a little less insane as the story proper opens, there is just enough room between animal puns to build the character of Peter Porker, and his parallel Earth so that the character comedy lands towards the end of the issue.
The plot sees Peter Porker’s ego swelled to monstrous proportions by his recent multiverse based adventures, such that he takes very little involvement in the sca-vengers takedown of Moletron (as in Ultron, geddit?), leading to not a little bitterness. The plot goes on from there, but to spoiler Spider-Ham is to ruin some perfectly good gags, so we’ll speak no more of it.
There are some great nods to Marvel canon, most often with a twist added, and some of the twists are particularly twisty, the origin story of Deerdevil (yes, you read that right) particularly amused us.
The whole thing is very much in the spirit of a Mad comics parody and, as such, the danger is always present to extend the joke too far, but, judging by issue #1, Spider-Ham seems to know the risks, pushing the pun-based humour just far enough, and poking fun at itself for the very absurdity of the whole concept. Will it last a run without exhausting this sense of fun? Who knows, but it’s worth investing in another few issues to find out.
