Radioactive Spider-Gwen #5 Review

Writer: Jason Latour / Artist: Chris Visions / Marvel Comics How interesting is a Spider-Gwen comic without Spider-Gwen? In a fascinating gamble of plot development, the entirety of Radioactive Spider-Gwen #5 goes without sight of Gwen Stacy, and instead relies on building the peripheral story plots we’ve seen thus far: Frank Castle chasing Spider-Woman, Detective Stacy’s struggle with his daughter’s identity, and whatever the hell Earth-65 Daredevil does as a bad guy. How does it all work out? Well, not so great. For a single issue I understand trying to develop other characters that surround our star. I’ve criticized this great series in the past, in fact, for failing to do just that – coming short in developing a supporting cast around Gwen that makes us care for her relationships with others. Issue #5 seems to go too far too soon though, jumping ahead to an issue whose reliance is on several characters who not only feel like temporary plot pawns, but also ones we’ve barely seen enough to care about in Earth-65. With the exception of Papa Stacy, the cast of characters had each been given brief cameos in the past, having built hardly enough interest to support an issue without Gwen Stacy in the equation. To make it a little worse, readers’ attentions had to be divided amongst all of them – Captain Stacy, Frank Castle, Matt Murdock, Sam Wilson – reaching broader with several characters when it might have been better to reach deeper with one or two.

I do appreciate the direc…