Spider-Gwen Annual #1 Review *SPOILERS*

Written By: Jason Latour

Art By: Veronica Fish, Chris Visions, Michael Walsh, Chris Brunner

Publisher: Marvel

Rating: T+

Price: $4.99 

Release Date: June, 29, 2016

I am not a fan of annuals, The last time I really cared was around 1993 when marvel announced all new characters in the annuals and they all came with character cards. Some were good, some were terrible, and some were pretty interesting. But let me get back on track here. The only time I buy annuals are when they are from titles that I must complete or if they have a writer or artist that I am a huge fan of. 

So lets bust this annual open and see if it is worth buying or just skipping all together. It starts off with a story that will remind most Spider-Man fans of his origin story. We have Gwen in the locker room at a wrestling event that gets robbed. The robber gets confronted by a guy who almost gets shot, but Gwen saved him. She calls him uncle and stops before saying his name. The guy worries that he should not have done that and was thinking of Peter and May. So in this world Uncle Ben is saved. My problem here is that he mentions Peter, who should be "Dead" by this time. I am not sure if this was written before that occurred withing the continuity of this story, or if they just don't care. 

Next story had Cap and Gwen reading a comic with a guy that looks like Prince. I dug the art, but the story was just okay. I actually wanted to skip it but decided to stick it out. It was not very good. We move on to Cap visiting Steve Rogers at the James Barnes V.A. Medical Center. I really enjoyed this story, and I really liked the art. This version of Cap always intrigued me, and I wish she had her own book. It just focuses on the dialog between the two of them and it was too short! I was hoping for more, but it made up for the previous stories for sure.  

Next is a MODAAK story. It is basically a MODOK/TRUMP amalgam and it was lame. Thank god it had Cap in the final panel, but it was not interesting in the least. 

Now speaking of interesting, we get a Watcher story that was pretty good. It was cooky as hell for sure, but it was actually fun. He mentions that he is not allowed to interfere, but that's all he is really doing. Each time he tries something happens to him or it backfires. The end result is the Watcher getting pepper sprayed and wondering if he will relieved of his one mission since he can't see. 

 We then see what a typical week is for Gwen and it is awesome. She fights Stilt Man, Ninjas, teams with Spider-Ham, hangs out with the Spider-Women, teams with a symbiotic Spider-Ham, and over sleeps on a Sunday.

This story was better than the first few and was driven mostly by the art. It was fast paced, well drawn, the panel layouts were awesome, and more importantly it had that feel of a Spider-Women book. Too bad the whole book was not done like this. 

In all I would say that this was a rather weak annual as I expected it would be, but I need to have it since I collect all the Spider-Women issues. At the $4.99 cover price, I would advise casual readers and non Spider Gwen fans to skip it all together. Thankfully we will be back to the regular issues next month! So until next time DatBeardedBastard is out!

6/10