Super-Late: Dark Web Finale #1

written by Zeb Wells

drawn by Adam Kubert (with Francesco Mortarino and Scott Hanna)

colored by Frank Martin

The Spider-Man/X-Men crossover "Dark Web" finally ends in pretty much the only way it can, and yet manages to be pretty decent.

In a nutshell, Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man teams up with the X-Men and Madelyne Pryor, aka the Goblin Queen, team up to retake New York from Ben Reilly, aka Chasm, the King of Limbo. Ben has the entire army of Limbo on his side not to mention his formidable lover Janine Godbe aka Hallow's Eve, but Pete's got a couple of surprises up his sleeve as well, all of which he will definitely need if he's going to free New York from Limbo's thrall.

As big event issues go, this one was well-put together, with some well-paced scripting by Zeb Wells and some nicely dynamic art by veteran Adam Kubert, who gets a bit of an art assist towards the end by Francesco Mortarino and Scott Hanna and lively colors by Frank Martin. The story ties up nicely with a bit of a status quo change, albeit one more relevant to the X-Men's corner of the Marvel Universe than to that of Spider-Man. It's nothing spectacular from a writing perspective, but it made for okay reading. If nothing else, though, I was glad that Adam Kubert closed out the story with decent art after Ed McGuinness put in a solid four issues of brilliance over in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man.  

More than the somewhat paint-by-numbers resolution to the story, though, what appealed to me the seemingly "meta" way in which Wells handles the question of what to do with Ben Reilly moving forward.   He kind of acknowledges that, as bad as Ben's behavior was over the course of this story, it is still overshadowed by the many tragedies that have befallen him, and as a result he still doesn't quite work as villain, so he quite literally ends the story in Limbo, with Marvel keeping him on ice until they figure out the next big story to drop him into. Hallow's Eve, in contrast, is getting her own miniseries soon so I'm at least glad to see they appear to have some kind of plan moving forward.  

 Ben Reilly is a character with a whole lot of potential far beyond just being a Peter replacement or a Spidey villain, and I do hope Marvel figures out what to do with him eventually beyond just killing him again or worse. This story, to be fair, treated him well enough.

7.5/10