Immortal Weapons #2 - A Review

Immortal Weapons #2 (of 5)

Publisher Marvel

Bride of Nine Spiders Story
Writer Cullen Bunn
Pencils Dan Brereton
Inkers Tom Palmer, Stefano Gaudiano & Mark Pennington
Colors Paul Mounts

Iron Fist Story
Writer Duane Swierczynski
Pencils Travis Foreman
Inks Stefano Gaudiano
Colors June Chung

The last few weeks I have been grabbing some big titles to read and then doing reviews and have been having a blast as so many of the books have been great. Heck, when something was a miss I just did not do a solo review post on the book. This week started out great with Irredeemable and then two big misses from Marvel. Immortal Weapons #2 was a waste of paper for the main story and at least the Iron Fist back-up was entertaining.

The Immortal Weapons were such cool looking characters and the little bit we saw of them in the Iron Fist series made them all to be very interesting and are very unique looking. I was so anxious for this series and the Fat Cobra story turned the character into such a louse that any affection or desire to see more of that character was shattered, but it was well written and drawn and gave us an origin for the character. It was about Fat Cobra.

So I knew each issue of this series was to bring a new creative team and the Bride of Nine Spiders was pretty cool sounding name and the David Aja cover was just awesome, so I sat down to read about her and got nothing. Heck I got less then nothing and if it was not for the second chapter in the Iron Fist story I might have demanded a refund from my store for my order.

Let’s start with the art. Dan Brereton is very stylistic. His work is dark, tons of blacks spotted, his characters are stiff, but usually his work has a quality or gravitas that pulls it into a thing that screams Brereton and for better or worse, there it is. Here he is just doing pencils and has three inkers and the job looks rushed and not very Brereton, but it does maintain his stiffness. The absolute wrong art for a martial arts story, luckily we only had a few pages about actual martial arts in the beginning that involved the Queen of Spiders.

The story was garbage, heck it was four day old rotting in the sun maggot ridden garbage, not trash, garbage. The story is this Queen of Spiders leaves behind a spider that has lived for a hundred years in a box. Then it is purchased by some collector who pays $10 million dollars because this spider sings and opens gateways. The old bitty collector who lost out bidding on it hires a crew of bad ass thieves to get it back. They find the other collector and all his staff is now essentially dead as the Spider sang its song and the Bride of Nine Spiders came through the doorway. She is trapped by the Spider song that is being played in an endless loop by the bad guy collector. Oh by the way it causes hallucinations also. The thieves inadvertently save the Bride and almost everyone is killed and the story ends.

What the heck was that? No story about the city the Bride comes from. No story that even really involves the Bride and her training. No clue as to who the Bride is or what she is all about, it was almost a random story and served no purpose at all. This was a spotlight issue that was suppose to build my interest in the Bride of Nine Spiders, instead I get a Creepy Comics story as the thieves are left at the end forever hallucinating as the Spider song is stuck in their heads. I know nothing about the Bride, who she is or why I should want to read about her. At least I don’t dislike her like I do Fat Cobra.

It is made all the worse because I was looking forward to this book and got a book that made issue #1 look good in comparison.

Now the beneficiary of all of this is the Iron Fist back-up. This is a weak Iron Fist story and not up to the same level of quality that Swierczynski and Foreman were doing with the regular series, but it outstrips the lead without batting an eye.

Overall Grade D- The back up saves this book from the ignoble F grade. If you are publishing a book call Bride of Nine Spiders, please make the story about the Bride.