The Superior Foes of Spider-Man vol. 1: Getting the Band Back Together

If you’re wondering what the success of “Hawkeye” by Fraction, Aja and co. has wrought, look no further.  The success of that title has not only convinced Marvel that unique creator-driven approaches are necessary for any title starring a B-list character to succeed, but that the “street level” approach to characters not necessarily known for it can succeed as well.  Enter Nick Spencer, of “Morning Glories” fame, and artist Steve Lieber who have set out to chronicle what it’s like being one of Spider-Man’s D-list villains.  “Superior Foes” is a very mean-spirited book starring some fairly unlikeable characters, yet its darkly comic approach works and delivers one of the most entertaining Marvel comics I’ve read so far this year.

Boomerang, Shocker, Speed Demon, Beetle and Overdrive are the new Sinister Six.  Never mind the fact that there’s five of them, that just means more of a cut for everyone whenever they pull a job.  That said, when the jobs you’re pulling involve robbing pet stores, knocking over comic shops, and ruining restaurants every single dollar counts.  Yet their days of D-list loser-dom may finally be over as their leader Boomerang, a.k.a. disgraced former major league pitcher Fred Meyers, has a lead on their ticket to ruling New York’s superpowered mafia:  the head of Silvio Silvermane.  They just have to break into the Owl’s heavily fortified deathtrap-filled stronghold in order to get it.  Never mind the fact that Fred is also on the hook to another crime boss, the Chameleon, has to deal with his superhero parole officer Mach VII, and may just be stringing his gang along for the benefit of his own big score.

So yeah, Fred’s kind of a dick and his partners aren’t all that much better.  Shocker is a coward, Speed Demon is an arrogant and self-centered, Overdrive has all the personality of his toys, and even though Beetle is the smartest and most organized of the bunch she still doesn’t have the good sense to stop hanging out with them.  At least they’ve got each other, right?  Given how often they backstab each other, kick Fred out of the group, and fumble their way through even the simplest jobs it’s amazing that they’re even able to function as a team at all.  No, these are about as unlikeable as protagonists get.  When Luke Cage and Iron Fist show up after an “anonymous tip” to take them down, it’s not hard to think that they have it all coming.

Yet the beauty, and even genius, of this book is that it manages to feed on all of this treachery and backstabbing amongst thieves and make it into a key part of its premise.  Specifically, it’s abundantly clear why these characters are part of the D-list when it comes to Spider-Man’s rogues gallery.  Not only do they not have particularly impressive powers, but they don’t have any sense of teamwork or integrity that would elevate them to even the C-list.  Fred may dream of eventually beating Spider-Man, beating the rap on his latest charge and running this town, but even he acknowledges that these fantasies are based on the law of odds rather than anything he brings to the table.  In short, “Superior Foes” shows us why these characters are D-listers and will likely remain so until Marvel stops publishing comics.

Beyond that, the series is also genuinely funny.  I mean, it’s one thing for a supervillain to rob a pet store, and something far more entertaining to see him lose a war of words with a tween girl and then steal the dog her mother was buying for her.  You’ve also got scenes like Shocker and Speed Demon forgetting the keys to Boomerang’s apartment, Beetle learning why robbing comic shops is more trouble than it’s worth, Fred’s speech to the parole board, and Mach VII’s less-than-graceful attempted exit from Fred’s apartment that offer some genuine laughs while defining the characters as well.  However, this is really Spencer’s show as a writer here as the dialogue here is easily the best I’ve read from him.  Not only does he give us lots of great lines, “I don’t wanna die with a boomerang on my face” has to be one of the best last-words-ever-said to the Punisher, but it’s still entertaining to read whenever he has his characters digress and rant away from the plot.  There’s also a clever running gag about how the best thing about being in the “Sinister Six” is splitting the money in progressively fewer ways which reaches its culmination near the end of the volume.  Yeah, “Morning Glories” is alright and “Ultimate Comics X-Men” was better than I expected, but this is easily Spencer’s most purely entertaining work.

Unfortunately his partner in this set a high-watermark standard in his art over a decade ago which he has yet to top.  I’m talking about Lieber’s fantastic work in Greg Rucka’s “Whiteout” (and its excellent sequel “Melt”) where he took an artistic setup that sounded like a joke — a black and white story set in Antarctica — and turned it into a stunning technical accomplishment.  I’ve yet to see him equal or surpass his work there, and this is no exception.

That being said, Lieber still does good work here.  He does good work with the characters and has a great sense of comic timing that really does justice to Spencer’s script.  As witty as the writing is, it would’ve all fallen apart if it hadn’t worked as well as it does with the art here.  Plus, Lieber throws in lots of fun little cartoonish flourishes, such as the one where Fred’s stick-figure self imagines what he’d really like to do to his attorney, that liven up the proceedings well.  It’s good work, even if it lacks the detail that defined his best.  Maybe if this series shifted to a black and white style…

…Except that would likely cause sales to crash harder than they already are.  As I mentioned yesterday, the amount of issues set to be collected in vol. 2 indicate that the title is not long for this world.  That really doesn’t bother me too much.  Such concentrated nastiness as we see here is good in small doses; but, if you stretch it out for too long then you run the risk of softening its edges or having the characters become completely unlikeable and uninteresting.  After what Boomerang does to the Shocker after their big heart-to-heart moment, this series would seem poised to follow the latter path.  Even so, this first volume of “Superior Foes” strikes the right balance in showing us a bunch of unlikeable protagonists who deserve everything they get and why that’s the case.  I thought it was great fun from beginning to end, and if the rumors of its demise are true, then here’s hoping it ends as strongly as it began.