Whatever a Spider Can’s Amazing X-Men #7 review

When you’re as new to comic-books as I am everythings a first. This is my first comic with the X-Men in. This is my first crossover issue where characters from two different franchises (Spider-Man and the X-Men) interact. And after doing some research this is a one-off fill-in issue that fills a gap between the last 6 issues of Amazing X-Men before new writers take over the series.

Now that means that we’re unlikely to get any game-changing storyline developments, any big risks taken with any characters or really anything that pushes the boat out at all, which is evidenced in my recap which you can find here . Which is fair enough, I don’t usually follow the X-Men comics and I’ve no idea what’s really taken place before this issue. So, if you can’t have game-changing storyline development or big risks taken with characters what can you have? Well you can have a crossover featuring everyone’s friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man of course!

The writers and artists on this issue are Kathryn Immonen, Paco Medina and Juan Vlasco and what they’ve brought us is a really fun, quick-witted comic, which is all they really could do given their limitations in terms of plot development and big revelations, their job is literally to ‘fill-in’ and it seems that they’ve had fun with doing so.

First of all the writing must be applauded, much of the strength of this issue lies solely with the quick-witted, smart and amusing banter between characters of which there’s an exceptional amount. All three characters in this issue, Spider-Man, Firestar and Iceman get their fair share of killer lines, non sequiturs and insults all superbly written and delivered by Immonen.

There are several laugh-out loud moments such as Iceman and Firestar’s name-dropping shopping list, Iceman using his own bodily created ice rather than buying some promising it would be okay because it was just ‘upper body ice’, Iceman’s annoyance at living with a ‘bunch of toilet paper stealers’, Iceman frantically declaring ‘It’s a baby bomb’. Okay so I found almost all of Bobby Drake’s dialogue hilarious. Don’t get me wrong though, Firestar and Spider-Man both had great lines too.

The premise of the story was simple, for reasons already explained and really driven home. Spider-Man was guarding a goat, which was the mascot of a game (I think American Football, or just Football depending on where you’re from) but it got mistaken for an important person by aliens who exchanged it for an alien baby. Spider-Man wants to get the alien baby back to it’s parents in exchange for the goat, and Firestar and Iceman are initially suspicious.

Now, I thought that suspicion was great. Superior Spider-Man was a huge chunk of the Spider-Man universe and the repercussions from that are still rippling around. Neither Firestar nor Iceman trust Spider-Man when he appears and both have their doubts about his mind-swap story and him being the real Peter Parker. It may be a fill-in issue but it doesn’t mean it can’t cleverly reference other important storylines even if it’s a light-hearted and comedy issue.

There’s not much more that can be said really, it’s a fun comic with a much more light-hearted tone and feel than I’ve experienced in any other comic so far. Even Medina’s art was brighter, more colourful and more jovial than, say, Amazing Spider-Man #1 or Miles Morales Ultimate Spider-Man #1. Nothing really happened and the goat/alien baby-swap storyline was rather silly but I enjoyed reading it!

Check out Whatever a Spider Can’s other Spidey comic book recaps and reviews
Amazing Spider-Man #1 recap, and review
Amazing Spider-Man: Learning to Crawl #1.1 recap, and review
All-New Ultimates #1 recap, and review
Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man #1 recap, and review
Amazing X-Men #7 recap,

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