MadCap's Comic Reviews - "Ben Reilly: The Scarlet Spider #2"

When we last left Ben Reilly, he had come to Las Vegas in order to hide from not only Peter Parker but also his "brother" Kaine, who was in pursuit of him (though Ben's not aware of that fact just yet). Hitting up an old contact from his brief stint as a super villain, Ben found himself in the office of Cassandra Mercury with a gun in his face. Issue number two picks up with the execution of Ben Reilly, already in progress. Unfortunately for Cassandra Mercury, she's just an average human and no bullet is any match for a prepared Spider family member with their Spider-Sense intact.

"Colt 45...semi-automatic...PLAY-DOH!"

After a bit of a stand-off, Ben gets some more information from Cassandra about her daughter, Abigail. Ben mentions she was suffering from Crooks' Disease, which would not yet be fatal. Cassandra admits that she is not, but she's in a coma that her doctor isn't expecting her to wake up from, so she might as well be dead. Ben asks to see her and is taken.

Kaine, meanwhile, is treating Ben's former associate Rita to a torturing...sorry, it's "enhanced interrogation" now, according to him. Through claiming that he's planning to waterboard her with scalding hot water rather than the usual cold, Kaine manages to intimidate her into revealing a clue to Ben's location - that he was planning to go to Broadway, but not the one in New York, as a flashback tells us. After getting her to reveal her password and her office floor at New U, Kaine reveals that it was just a bucket of dry ice and that he had no intention of actually harming her.

A far cry from the man who brutally murdered Otto Octavius back in the 90's.

...he got better, obviously, but that's neither here nor there.

Mock torturing people really IS an improvement for him.

Back in Vegas, after an awkward elevator ride, Ben is brought to little Abigail. She is, as Cassandra said, completely comatose. Ben comes up to her bedside, stunned into silence, and has a gun pulled on him by Cassandra....who relents the moment that she realizes that Abigail has woken up, asking for a glass of water. Slate and Ben head out into the hallway and end up in a tussle over what just happened Ben politely suggesting (with a gun in Slate's mouth for emphasis) that they just play nice and get along so as not to ruin Cassandra's happy moment.

Not long after, Ben bluffs his way into convincing Cassandra that not only did he cause Abigail to wake up via telepathy, but that he can cure her with some funding and time. As a condition of this, June ends up getting free room and board at the casino as well as all the quarters she can stomach.

Awww, Ben's feeding her gambling addiction!

Meanwhile, Kaine breaks into New U's offices and finds Rita's office. Trolling through the database, he uses the Broadway clue and finds records of Abigail's condition and surmises that Ben has gone there. While Kaine using the records technically makes sense, and he ultimately does deduce correctly, I went ahead and checked Wikipedia for places that are either named or related to Broadway. There are at least fifteen that have no relation to New York or Nevada. Regardless, he's right and is already making plans to go after Ben when two men in tactical gear burst into the office he's in...and open fire on him with some lovely automatic weapons, ending the issue.

The tone has definitely gotten a little more serious here. No comical hallucinations of the Scarlet Spider or the Jackal for Ben, we have Kaine threatening to waterboard a woman (even though he had no intention of doing so), and an almost gratuitous overuse of gun play. We are clearly far and away from the high flying adventures of Peter Parker, this series being a different animal entirely (not to say that Spidey can't be dark). We're starting to see a status quo develop - Ben working for Cassandra to develop a cure for Crooks' Disease, Aunt June living at the casino, Ben trying to become a hero, Kaine's efforts to stop him because he believes he's still a villain (and rightly so). We also get further development on Ben trying to get a grasp on a familiarity to his life as he gets Aunt June room and board at the casino...as well as endless quarters to feed her gambling addiction.

...two out of three ain't bad?

All the ingredients are here for something great, and we'll be getting into it next Saturday!

Face front, True Believers!

*record scratch* "Hi...that's me. You're probably wondering how I got here..."

Ben Reilly: The Scarlet Spider #2 comes to us from Marvel Comics.Written by Peter David, Penciled by Mark Bagley, Inked by John Dell, color artist'd by Jason Keith, and lettered by Joe Caramgna. They all did great!

For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, be sure to follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.