Spider-Verse Comes To An End...Did Anyone Make It Out Alive? (Spoilers: Yes)

Spider-Verse has been going on for about 30 comics and 6 months now. All together, it was a really good event. It was pretty epic in scale, and you can tell the creative team was having a lot of fun throwing together different versions of Spider-Man and seeing what would come out of it. We got to see some characters I really miss take the spotlight like Mayday. We've also gotten some interesting new characters added to the mix, like Silk and Spider-Gwen, both will be receiving their own series in the coming weeks. And we finally got to see some confrontations between Peter Parker and the Superior Spider-Man. I also thought the Inheritors were impressive villains, and it was great to see something done with the lore JMS had built up during his run. So I was really looking forward to seeing how this story would play out.

Amazing Spider-Man #14 - Spider-Verse Finale

Written by: Dan Slott
Pencilled by: Guiseppe Camuncoli and Olivier Coipel
Inked by: Wade Von Grawbadger, Cam Smith, and Livesay
Colored by: Justin Ponsor
Lettered by: Chris Eliopoulos

Published by: Marvel
Cover Price: $3.99

Note: This is a review of the digital version which can be found on Comixology.

Warning! This review contains quite a few spoilers!

Up front, I do want to say that I was disappointed that there wasn't a bigger shake up in the status quo in the end. Sure, a lot of Spider totems throughout the universe had been killed throughout the story, but very few of them were characters that had appeared before or I would have expected to see ever again, so it's not all that huge an impact. There are still a few epilogue stories to go, so maybe I am wrong and we will get a few more surprises. At the very least, I am really curious on what they plan on doing with Superior Spider-Man. I can't imagine Otto is all that thrilled finding out he's scheduled to die again pretty soon. And we

 I also thought that the Inheritors were defeated a little too cleanly. After the epic battles we've been seeing throughout Spider-verse, they seemed to all fold pretty easily in the end. Beaten and tossed into the radiation universe, where they will survive by hiding away in a bunker for all eternity. It pretty much screams to me, "These guys will be back!"

I also have to admit, I couldn't quite figure out what the Inheritors' plan was in the end. They planned to kill Kaine, Baby Ben, and Silk to use their blood to taint the great web which would mean there would be no more spider-totems. But since the Inheritors eat Spider-Totems, that seems like a very short sighted plan to me.

But don't take that to mean I didn't enjoy this issue. There were still lots of great character moments. I especially loved that they were able to save baby Ben by swapping him with Spider-Ham. It did mean we had to see WAY too much of Spider-Ham's body throughout the rest of the issue, but it was clever and entertaining.

I also liked that Mayday was able to control her rage and pain and not cross the line. It would have really ruined the character for me to see her go into full revenge mode. It's just not who Spider-Man is.

On the flip side of that, we got to see Superior Spider-Man in full "evil" mode, killing the Master Weaver to try and solve all these problems. This was a terrific parallel, and I really imagine that action will have to have some major consequences.

I wonder if this will tie in to Secret Wars.  Marvel can sometimes be hit or miss with ensuring continuity between their various lines, but I would think Secret Wars is so all-encompassing it would not make any sense to have this story end the way it did without any connection at all.  Maybe we will get to see the various Spider-Totems team up again on Battleworld.  I would definitely love that.

There were so many characters in the book, we have five artists listed between two pencilers and three inkers.  Despite this, I thought the issue looked great.  Sometimes when you have so many artists, you get some inconsistencies, but I didn't see any of that here.  One thing I really loved though out Spider-Verse was that you were usually able to identify where 616 Peter Parker was at any one time.  Again, he was very consistent, and it would have been easy to lose him in the crowd, but there seemed to be a conscious effort on making sure he was always clearly identified. 

I did think the ending was a little anti-climactic, and that things tied up a little too neatly, but all in all, I loved Spider-Verse and this was another very good issue.  I am really curious about how things will wrap up in the epilogue issues, especially with the missing Kaine and the fate of Superior Spider-Man.