SPIDER-MAN: QUALITY OF LIFE #1

By: Tony Whitt
Date: Friday, May 24, 2002

With the release of the brilliant SPIDER-MAN feature film, it was a given that Marvel would start flooding the market with Spidey-related stuff in such quantities as we haven't seen since the early ?90s. But just as back then, the quality is variable at best, and while there are a few promising works out there (SPIDER-MAN: BLUE being one of them), there are some real stinkers, too. SPIDER-MAN: QUALITY OF LIFE fits into the latter category.

It's not the fault of the script this time, though. Even when Greg Rucka does a mediocre script, it's still pretty good, and that's the case here: Peter Parker's been assigned to cover a protest against the policies of Monnano Corporation. They've created a protein crop that can grow anywhere, provided it's only fed with fertilizer provided by Monnano, naturally. Unbeknownst to Peter, the process used to create it causes cancer, and one of the first victims is the wife of his old foe, Dr. Curtis Connors. Connors can't get no satisfaction when he tries to sue, so his reptilian alter-ego decides to get it for him. But Monnano is ready, and they have their own counterdefense against the Lizard, meaning double the trouble for Peter.

Not a bad plot - not quite worthy of its own miniseries, perhaps, but not bad at all. So why should this storyline receive its own four (overpriced) issues, you ask? Because it's gloriously rendered in (ta-da!) computer-generated graphics! (At this point, you should have heard the triumphant music in your head grinding to a sudden halt.) Yes, ladies and gentlemen, SPIDER-MAN: QUALITY OF LIFE is completely digitally rendered by the folks at Blue Dream Studios, with Scott Christian Sava providing the main artwork and Tracy Mark Lee, Antero Pedras and Adrian Hartrey, Marcello Bortolino, and Scott Hyman doing character design, environmental modeling, character modeling, and character rigging, respectively. In other words, a lot of manpower and time went into the creation of this book, probably far more than went into earlier digital efforts. Too bad it all looks so horrid.

Mind you, I'm not against the concept of doing comics digitally - the technology is pushing us in that direction, anyway, and while I fear that the amount of time and money spent to produce books like this will eventually drive comic prices even higher, I'd never be such a Luddite that I'd suggest we not go there. But must we sacrifice quality to do so? The artistic team was obviously going for a REBOOT-type look for this book, and they've achieved it - most panels look exactly like stills from the computer-generated series. But no one seems to have asked whether that was a good look to begin with, or whether it was appropriate for a comic story - especially a story like this, in which the visuals should enhance the plot rather than distracting from it. Sadly, that's precisely what these images do.

Rather than enjoying any of the nuances of Rucka's script, you end up musing about how silly Peter Parker looks, or how much Yith looks like Lara Croft in that one panel. The only sequence with any subtlety whatsoever occurs when Connors is begging his lawyer to pursue his case, in which we see him talking on a phone from behind and slowly "zoom" in until he turns and we focus on his reptilian eye. It's a marvelously evocative page in a book that otherwise has no subtlety whatsoever. If digitally-produced comics can regularly feature sequences like that, then perhaps they have a future. But if the rest of the book is anything to go by, a bright future it's not.

Oh, and the Jay Leno-Spider-Man backup feature appearing here and in other books this month sucks the big one, too. Just in case you were wondering.