Review by Ian Keogh
Spoilers in review
Spoiler alert! Don’t read past the third paragraph below to avoid the spoiler.
The short review is that ‘Dead Language’ is a really good story, living up to all the teasing Zeb Wells extended over four previous volumes. It would be a better story, however, with all chapters in the single volume. The separation hurts.
Part 1 investigated the past and ended with Peter Parker asking Norman Osborn for help, and Part 2 opens with Spider-Man stealing technology from the Fantastic Four to enable that help. He and Mary Jane had been transported to a hellish dimension where New York lay in ruins and a human named Paul was the last man standing. MJ and Spider-Man were separated, and the technology is to enable him to return and rescue her. What remains to be explained is why in the present day Paul and MJ are now together and with a pair of children. It’s down to a rather predictable SF standby, and although producing an interesting result, the means of arriving at it could have done with greater thought.
Wells will have you so wrapped up in the past you’ll forget a present day threat is very much an issue, and Wells and John Romita Jr give that all the welly it deserves. Because the Marvel universe is so interconnected and everyone knows each other it sometimes doesn’t ring true that Spider-Man has to face a world threatening villain alone. That doesn’t happen here, and unlike Dark Web where everything was crowded, others turning up to help here is natural, and there’s a great role for Ms. Marvel. The ending is a real shocker, but before then there are a couple of too convenient moments, a wave of a hand and the problem is solved.
That leads to ‘Fallen Friend’, a eulogy in which Wells has no involvement and Spider-Man very little. Instead writers and artists who’ve been involved in Ms. Marvel’s career take turns spotlighting people attending her memorial. G. Willow Wilson and Takeshi Miyazawa dealing with her supporting cast is thoughtful, while Mark Waid and Humberto Ramos eventually develop a very touching thread. Saladin Ahmed and Andrea Di Vito’s Avengers episode is more ordinary, if explaining why there’s no easy revival, except there later was courtesy of the X-Men’s technology.
Three unconnected stories end the collection. Wells and Patrick Gleason having Spider-Man try to subdue an escaped gorilla is funny, and sets up future appearances by Doctor Octopus and Kraven in Armed and Dangerous. Erica Schultz and Julian Shaw provide an epilogue to the disappointing Dark Web, and while the pay-off works, the set-up is too prolonged, and the heartache never fully transmits. It does when Celeste Bronfman and David López spotlight Anna Watson, dementia sufferer, when something goes wrong with her medication.
As a collection, this is slightly better than average, but a far stronger book would have combined all chapters of ‘Dark Language’ in one collection and combined the remaining material from Part 1 and Part 2 separately.
