Marvel’s first theme park tie-in miniseries wraps this week in a globe-trotting adventure. W.E.B. of Spider-Man #5 is written by Kevin Schinick, drawn by Alberto Alburquerque, colored Rachelle Rosenberg, and lettered by Joe Sabino.
We’re now five issues in, at the end of the road for this confusing little mini and it’s still no clearer what it should be. And in that, W.E.B. of Spider-Man #5 is clearly two things.
The first is a cute little all-ages miniseries, soon to be collected. It gives comics-reading parents an opportunity to introduce their kids to characters such as Squirrel Girl, Moon Girl, and Amadeus Cho. The art is light and cartoony, but Alberto Alburquerque doesn’t hold back just because it’s a series meant for kids. He’s extremely detailed in his figure and background work. This issue is set in Paris and it genuinely feels like Paris from the art side. The characters are easy to get invested in, and the concerns of the first issue — with the over-reliance on Iron Man references and a too-old Peter — are non-existent.
The issues here are largely about the villain. Mendel Stromm is a classic C-list Spider-Man villain. To help kids invest in hi, Schnick and Alburquerque give him a makeover, transforming the former Robot Master into the Cy-Gob. It’s a neat design reminiscent of the Hobgoblin makeover of the Ben Reilly era. Unfortunately the visual and the codename disappear almost immediately, reverting to the frightening Stromm design of the nineties (maybe a little too frightening for young readers) and not doing anything especially Goblin-y for the rest of the issue.
However on the other hand you can’t help but look at the second purpose the mini tries to serve. Again, this is a theme park tie-in with no tie-in to the theme park. Avengers Campus is still never mentioned. The plot of the Campus’s Spider-Man ride is hinted at, but this story goes in a completely different direction from the same basic idea. At least this part of the story is set near a real-life Disney theme park, unlike the opening.
Now, the creative team isn’t to blame for that. I get that, and that’s not on them. They did their best with a weird situation, giving us a mini that I’m happy to hand to my kids and let them check out. My six year-old is Spider-Man obsessed right now and he’d love this. But making a story about the Worldwide Engineering Brigade (yes that’s what W.E.B. stands for), while Disney has basically ignored that part of the theme park land… it’s confusing. That makes it emblematic of this era of the Walt Disney Corporation: a sign that this is a company that rapidly lost the point in the Bob Chapek era.
So in the end, I’ll enjoy it for what it is, and wonder how, from a corporate standpoint, it failed so badly.
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.
