Well… back to this. Spider-Man’s just died and been reborn, I’m sure he’s gonna need some time to get his head wrapped around that. Just kidding, he’s playing poker with a bunch of superheroes. Every choice Paul Jenkins has made since this book became Spectacular Spider-Man is baffling. In through the revolving door marked “penciler” for 2 months is Talent Caldwell. If my parents gave me the name “Talent” and I chose a career as an artist, I would feel like I had a target on my back. I hope he didn’t feel similarly. He was discovered by Michael Turner. Michael Turner got huge drawing Witchblade at Marc Silvestri’s Image imprint, Top Cow, before creating his own company to produce comics about an underwater heroine named Fathom. Caldwell drew Fathom-related things, and at this moment, has only recently left Turner’s company to do work at the Big Two. All of which is to say, his style has something of Turner in it, and Turner’s style evoked the post-Image Marc Silvestri, so there’s an unusually complex pedigree to this. Robert Campanella and Studio F hang in there. Anyway: Poker. We join X-Men’s Angel as he wings his way to a building with a big login on top that just says “ESTABLISHMENT.” Weird name.
Caldwell really draws women like Turner, who got famous for drawing women. So many people who nerds flock to for drawing “sexy women” do not, in fact, draw sexy women, in my humble opinion. Turner, like J. Scott Campbell, specialized in anorexic creatures with nowhere to store their internal organs, but his unique contribution was the glassy eyes of a sex doll. Well, unique until he established a studio and hired a bunch of people to draw like him. Well, Spider-Man continues assessing the players’ skills, leaving out Sue, when there’s a knock at the door.
Comics about your various heroes playing cards aren’t all that uncommon. Despite Jenkins’ Spidey’s dismissive appraisal of Thing’s poker skills, he hosts a famous poker night in other comics. But one where Kingpin shows up is different, at least. Hey, remember how Spider-Man turned into a spider, died, was reborn and got new powers? Wouldn’t you expect the next issue to explore the fallout of all that? I sure would. Instead… this.
I mean, a poker night story would be fine with me, a nice change of pace, but Spider-Man DIED LAST ISSUE. We’re just moving on to the next thing like he didn’t DIE LAST ISSUE. I don’t get it, man! Where are your storytelling instincts? Well, anyway, the heroes confer and decide to let Fisk into the game on his terms. Has no one considered this is blood money? Peter “I can’t sell this gold notebook because I didn’t obtain it legally” Parker is gonna donate this mob money to charity? Whatever, I guess. The first incident of the night is Fisk trying to light a cigar, and Dr. Strange magically making it fail to work after warning him he can’t smoke and being ignored. Then Strange loses all his money on a single terrible hand before buying back in with his own money. This is a weird running gag.
The best part of this story is Reed Richards just being one of the guys. Almost anyone else would’ve made him the one who has no idea how to play. I think a lot of writers don’t get Reed. They want to make him too stuffy and boring just because he’s really smart. Also: It only really just occurred to me that this “heroes play poker gang” is the FF, Spider-Man, and Angel. Spider-Man said Black Cat isn’t a regular and Dr. Strange is new. Why just Angel out of all the X-Men? It’s all people who’re friends with Spider-Man… and Angel.
Caldwell’s art is generally just sort of “Michael Turner Lite,” but his Spider-Man is “Humberto Ramos Lite.” Kind of jarring, really. You might think, pretty reasonably, that Spider-Man is referring to, you know, The Marauders, the X-Men villains who are all cyborgs, one of whom has a whole tank under his stomach instead of legs. But, no, he tells a story about running into a group of weirdos called “The Masochist Marauders” who enjoy tricking superheroes into beating them up. Great story. This story about a poker game hasn’t had a lot of poker in it, but we’re running out of pages, so we jump ahead to just Spidey, Thing and Fisk left in the game just in time to see Thing get cleaned out. Naturally, it’s down to Spidey and Fisk.
Spider-Man is next seen swinging through the city with flowers for MJ, laughing increasingly hard. The End. “Poker Night” is a sort of can’t-miss setup for me, and yet, this wasn’t too good. But, really, I just can’t shake the fact that we’re just ignoring the previous storyline. It feels like everyone realized that story was incredibly stupid too late to stop it and we’re all just moving on.