Spider-Woman: Shifting Gears, Volume 1: Baby Talk by Dennis Hopeless
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’m anti-meh. So can I say…smeh?
The art was pretty great. When we were in the alien hospital, that was awesome. Very creative, very interesting, and some good art-based storytelling, which shows a lot of faith between the artist and writer, which is cool. The art does some of the heavy lifting later on too, but I missed the cut loose feeling of the space stuff with weird aliens that we got at the beginning.
Pregnant/new mom superhero is a new take, to me anyway, but I don’t know if it brought a lot to the table for me. Truth be told, I checked this out from the library, returned it, and then decided to finish it later on. I returned it because I gave it a shot and didn’t love it. And then I checked it out again because, eh, finishing it was probably the more honest version of “giving it a shot.” So what I’m saying is the story didn’t take me on an unbelievable ride that I couldn’t jump off of, I guess.
A lot of this probably has to do with the fact that I don’t really have strong feelings about Spider-Woman any which way, so her being pregnant doesn’t really matter to me. It’s like finding out someone from a show you don’t watch all that often is pregnant, or that someone you know from high school is pregnant. There’s some interest there, but…smeh. Maybe there’s something to it if you’ve had a kid or are close with people having kids. But for me…smeh.
The dialog is good in spots, the characters are alright. The story isn’t bad, but for the most part I’d say there isn’t a ton of story. This one is primarily Die Hard except Bruce Willis is pregnant and the whole thing happens in an alien-infested black hole. There’s even a big door the bad guys are drilling through! And there’s a space cop (Captain Marvel) who is exterior and mostly not helpful. Huh. When I think about it that way, it SOUNDS like something great, but I just didn’t find it too thrilling. The bad guys, a bunch of Skrulls, are just your typical knuckleheads. Or knucklechins, as it were. No Alan Rickman to hang your hat on, that’s for sure.
I guess maybe it’s been done? Not by a pregnant superhero…but then again, who’s worse off in a Die Hard scenario, regular guy or pregnant superhero? I dunno. That’s too much math, and the point is that the bunch of people trapped in a space while bad guys attempt to do a thing is a story that we’ve heard a few times now. Let’s get these motherfuckin Skrulls off this motherfuckin floating in a black hole maternity ward, you know?
Also, and this is spoiler-free because I haven’t read ahead or googled, how destined is Porcupine to die? Seriously. Bad guy turned good, superhero-ing, also a super-dad who seems like a real nice dude? Kind of a main character but kind of not? This guy just seems like the one in the sci-fi movie where you’re like, “That motherfucker is toast.”