Superior Spider-man Team-up Special #1 review

The final part of
'Arms of the Octopus'

So, I've just finished reading Superior Spider-man Team-up Special #1 (boy, that's quite a mouthful), the final part of the 'Arms of the Octopus' story which began within the All New X-Men Special and continued in the Indestructible Hulk Special . Now say what you will about the story as a whole (and I might just do that later), but I found this issue to be, well pretty good actually.
So, what's it about? Well, as it follows on from the other two specials, this Spidey special picks up the story right where they left off, with Spidey, Hulk and the X-men battling past bad guys Doc Ock adn Abomination as well as the forces that brought them to the present. The only difference here, much like the other two books, is that the narration now comes from Spidey and not either Banner or Beast.

Spidey should have kept these
arms for his regular series.

Now, once again Mike Costa takes up the writing duties, providing the overall plot a sense of continuity and, I've gotta admit, he has done a real good job with this issue. Unlike the Hulk special, which just seemed like dead weight for most of it, this Spidey special was far more engrossing than I was expecting, with Costa putting across an interesting, albeit creepy and arrogantly dislikable, Spider-man. If there is one downside here, it's (like the other two specials) the X-men (other than Beast), who seem to do nothing but take up panel space, although they have more of a prescence here than in the last two installments. It would have been nice to see them contribute more, although it's a minor gripe in the grand scheme of things.

Where the issue stumbles is with the art. Michael Dialnyas takes over duties and, unfortunately, his isn't a style I can get on bored with. There isn't anything inherently wrong with it, I just find the art in this title very inferior to a lot of the other books I pick up, and certainly the weak link in regards to the art within this crossover.

Despite that though, I still enjoyed this Superior Spider-man Team-up Special and, given I picked up the rest of the crossover I'm glad I did, as the story certainly had a satisfying conclusion, even if everything returned to the status quo. That said, if I could do it all again, I probably wouldn't. This story was good, just not that good.