Spider-Man and the X-Men #1 Review
By Daniel Wood
Spider-Man and the X-Men is a title that I’ve very much been looking forward to once I heard that Spider-Man would be replacing Wolverine following the character’s death. The premise was absolutely spot-on with Wolverine tasking Spider-Man to find the mole in the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning by becoming a teacher. This seemed just like the kind of wacky hijinks I was after having completely missed the well-received Superior Foes of Spider-Man (I’ve managed to read one issue).
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Superior Foes of Spider-Man is a title that does share a few similarities with Spider-Man and the X-Men. Both series are mainly comedy orientated and both series focus on a cast of relatively lesser known and unheard of characters in the Marvel universe, Spider-Man excluded of course.
In this title alone we get treated to a whole host of students/potential moles that I hadn’t heard of before such as Hellion, Rockslide, No-Girl, Glob Herman, Shark-Girl, Ernst and Eye-Boy. They’re an ecclectic mixture of troublesome disenfranchised and weird mutants hand-picked for Spider-Man’s Guidance Counseling class. As far as ensemble casts go, they’re an ecclectic bunch, but they’re a
promising group of characters in terms of potential narratives!
The villains of the piece are also plucked out of Marvel’s dusty history with Unus the Untouchable making a cameo at the start of the book just to give Spider-Man something to do and Sauron and Stegron joining forces for what really is the first time (as many people have said, why hasn’t this happened before?)
And all of this is played up for laughs by writer Elliot Kalan who wastes absolutely no time in getting Spider-Man and his students involved in mad-cap adventures and massive amounts of trouble ending the first issue with a cliffhanger that sees Spider-Man and his gang held captive on a Staten Island that is slowly being transformed into a home for prehistoric dinosaurs.
There are several little touches that really helped this book to shine as well, such as the opening page detailing Spider-Man’s official job-offer letter and Wolverine’s note asking for help, as well as the mock ‘graduation photo’ page introducing Spider-Man’s X-Man class. The appearances of the Demon Bamf tricking Peter are also nicely timed and underplayed enough for them to be comically effective. In fact Kalan goes out of his way to make almost every line and every piece of dialogue have a punch-line or a comedic edge to it.
I’ll admit that I would’ve found the frosty reception that Spider-Man got from Storm and the other X-Men at the start of the comic to be incredibly confusing given that I’d previously understood them both to have a decent relationship. However I also read the Axis storyline recently and that goes someway to explaining why mutants would have a problem with other superheroes (perhaps Kalan could’ve mentioned Axis at some stage?)
This is a pretty strong opening issue that introduces a variety of interesting characters, gives us Spider-Man in a brilliant new situation and actually made me chuckle quite a lot throughout all whilst an understated element of drama throughout. If you’re looking for a replacement to Superior Foes of Spider-Man this isn’t as finely tuned, but this is probably the closest you’re going to get to it for now!
Check out Whatever a Spider Can’s other recaps and reviews of X-Men and Spider-Man comic book crossovers
Amazing X-Men #7 recap, and review
All-New X-Men #31 recap, and review
All-New X-Men #32 recap and review
All-New X-Men #33 recap, and review
Spider-Man and the X-Men #1 recap,
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