The Superior Foes of Spider-Man vol. 3: Game Over

The era of fill-ins is over!  What we get with this final volume are six issues of delightfully mean-spirited entertainment from writer Nick Spencer and artist Steve Lieber (with Rich Ellis pitching in on one issue).  Thanks to the Owl, Boomerang is now back to working with some of his former partners — Beetle, Overdrive, and Speed Demon — to steal the painting of Doctor Doom’s real face from the Chameleon.  While they’re doing this, Shocker is continuing his “Odd Couple” routine with the head of Silvio Silvermane until Hammerhead shows up to claim it for his own (bizarre?) purposes.  It might surprise you to know that things don’t end badly for everyone involved here.  What shouldn’t surprise you is that the biting humor of Spencer’s script continues to pay dividends as there are plenty of laughs to be had at the expense of the superhero genre and as we get even more evidence regarding why the title characters are strictly D-list villains.  Lieber and Ellis’ art is also on excellent form, perfectly in sync with the eccentricities of the script and with how they have the characters act out the many indignities and slights they receive and perpetrate on each other on the page.

What’s not to like?  Well, I have to throw in the standard, “If you didn’t like the previous two volumes, then you’re not going to like this one,” caveat as this kind of dark humor and tweaking of the superhero genre isn’t going to win over any more fans than it already has.  I also wish that someone had impressed upon Spencer the idea that there is such a thing as “too clever” when he was coming up with the ending.  Or rather, “endings.”  I’ll admit that I dug the “Lady or the Tiger” moment at the baseball game, but then we cut away to Boomerang (who compares that part to the ending of “Lost”) in the bar talking to a “Peter” who calls him out on ending the story there.  We then get a couple more scenes letting us know what happened to the rest of the cast in ways that are either not entirely satisfying (Beetle and Overdrive) or feel like setup for stories that’ll never happen (Shocker).  Then you get the “Sopranos”-esque final page which is annoying in the way that it name-checks how it’s ending the series in the same infamous manner as that show.  That kind of self-aware smugness is “too clever” in a nutshell.  Still, Spencer would’ve had to have worked a lot harder than he does here to destroy the goodwill he built up to that point.  These three volumes of “Superior Foes” have been great fun overall, and are highly recommended for those of you who like the strange kind of superhero titles that work best off in the margins of their shared universe.