Spider-Man: Cosmic Chaos! | Review

Spider-Man: Cosmic Chaos!
Writer/artist: Mike Maihack
Amulet Books; $12.99
Publisher’s age rating: 6-9

Have you been enjoying cartoonist Mike Maihack’s Spider-Man graphic novels from Amulet Books, Spider-Man: Animals Assemble! and Spider-Man: Quantum Quest!…? Well if so, I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news? There’s a new book in the series, Spider-Man: Cosmic Chaos!. The bad news? It’s the final book in the series (at least for now; hopefully Maihack isn’t done playing with Spidey and the Marvel Universe forever, though).

The latest picks up where the previous volume left off, pausing only for a page-long recap of Quantum Quest!, with Spider-Man, the Silver Surfer’s silver surfboard, and Jeff the Land Shark in a diner in outer space. A diner next to which the Silver Surfer has taken up skateboarding, as luck would have.

Spidey reunites surfboard and Surfer—whom Maihack gives surfer-esque lingo–and the cosmic entity immediately notes Spidey’s dolphin talisman, which has featured in all three volumes now, noting that it’s not a dolphin on it, but rather a “vurbfzax”, and he promises to take Spidey to an expert on xenobiology.

After a spectacular Kirby-esque splash page and a riff on the old Abbot and Costello “Who’s on first?” sketch involving the name of the Guardians of the Galaxy’s home base Knowhere, the Surfer delivers Spidey to the promised xenobiologist: Rocket Raccoon.

Each of Maihack’s original graphic novels has borne a heading reading “A Mighty Marvel Team-Up,” and each has featured Spidey meeting a different team of Marvel heroes. First it was the Avengers, then the Fantastic Four and now, obviously, it’s the Guardians. Although just as those previous books featured all kinds of other Marvel Universe guest-stars, so too does this one feature many familiar faces, though these are of course all related to the Marvel’s outer space settings. (Some of these will be familiar from the Marvel movies and other mass media adaptations, others might be obscure enough that only grown-up readers will recognize them…Maihack’s many references might be something young readers grow into, the more familiar they become with Marvel comics.)

It’s quickly established that Rocket knows exactly what’s up with the dolphin/vurbfzax talisman (It turns out Groot, who is here still in his baby form, has a similar one too). They are part of a set of seven that each have a different but great reality-altering power, and when all seven are united it could have “universe-shattering consequences!”

The rest of the Guardians are quickly gathered as the threat escalates, the talismans all seemingly being drawn together…and all ending up in the hands of one of Marvel’s many cosmic villains. Can the assembled heroes save the universe, and, perhaps more importantly, can Spidey get the blast-happy guardians to do so by being both friendly and neighborly…?

Maihack’s take on Spider-Man, which has emphasized those two virtues (and components of one of the character’s several famous descriptors), continues to be just as charming as it was in the first volume, and it remains fun to not only spend time with this version of Spider-Man, but also to see him bounce off other famous Marvel characters (and/or random aliens he might share scenes with).

Maihack’s detailed artwork slightly softens, stylizes and cartoonifies the characters, but they retain an elegance and sense of efficiency in their designs, mostly shying away from the body-builder stereotype of super-comics that have defined the genre for the last three or four decades (with the beefy, muscular Drax an obvious exception).

The outer space setting also gives Maihack some particularly fun toys from the Marvel toy box to play with, including some of the publisher’s founding artist Jack Kirby’s trippier designs, and tributes to Kirby big (the aforementioned splash of Silver Surfer surfing the spaceways) and small (the ever-present “Kirby dots” denoting cosmic energy.)

Perfect for a Marvel fan of practically any age or experience level with the publisher’s output, Maihack’s Spider-Man books are perfect superhero comics. Now times three.

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