SPIDER-MAN'S TANGLED WEB #7

By: Tony Whitt
Date: Sunday, November 11, 2001

Cab driver Charlie Clemmens has a problem. He's just been told he has a barely operable brain tumor, and the highly risky surgery that could remove it costs half a million dollars. At first there seems to be no hope, but Charlie has a secret that many would pay twice that amount for: Spider-Man's true identity.

Bruce Jones (INCREDIBLE HULK) does a fantastic job of doing exactly what the SPIDER-MAN'S TANGLED WEB series has always promised: to show the effects Spider-Man has on the world around him. It's all well and good to have Peter Parker sharing his secret with someone who can call him up at the Bugle if he sees a mugging, but what if that someone runs into trouble of his own? Charlie has kept Peter's secret as a sort of "Gentlemen's Agreement" (which is also the title of this story arc), but now he's faced with a decision that's literally life and death. In this sort of situation, what would you do?

Jones doesn't give up the answer this time around, of course. Charlie struggles with the question all the way through this issuethe question itself is never actually stated, but it would take a real idiot not to figure it out. It's also not the sort of answer that's easily deduced from Charlie's character. Jones goes out of his way to flesh Charlie out, to make him likeableand to keep us from remembering that we're supposed to be on Spidey's side. Even Peter Parker might have trouble with this one.

The only other element of this book that's as troublesome as Charlie's decision is the artwork. Weeks and Rubinstein use a gritty and realistic style that seems like a cross between the work of Jim Aparo and the old Italian DIABOLIK comics of the late '60s. It's an uneasy mix at best, though perfectly in keeping with the "real life" mandate of this series. And much like real life, it isn't always attractive.


One other problemwhich is more a measure of my own impatience than any failing on Jones or the artists' partsis the flashback that Charlie keeps having during his tumor-induced headaches. We're given very little information about it, apart from knowing that Charlie was in an accident and that it had something to do with a foiled robbery involving Spider-Man. Those silent sequences, however, feature some of the most effective artwork in the entire book, so I can't complain too much. Besides, if my biggest problem is being unable to wait until next month to find out what's happening, that's a good sign, isn't it?

SPIDER-MAN'S TANGLED WEB

Grade: B+

Issue: No. 7

Author(s): Bruce Jones, Lee Weeks, Josef Rubinstein

Publisher:  Marvel Comics

Price: $2.99