Review Detail

This superhero / manga crossover does Spiderman like we've never seen before, featuring a pre-modern Japanese setting, familiar villains, a dramatic art style, and multiple spider people, including Hyo, a brand new hero to root for. When Hyo stumbles across an injured Spiderman needing help in the street, he's surprised to find himself the new host of a powerful symbiote and in the company of Spiderman's friends, who volunteer to train his abilities. But Hyo's father is a captive to Governor Kingpin, and with lives and liberty on the line, Hyo and Spiderman are swept up in a dramatic battle of heroes versus villains.

As a reader who generally prefers the art of manga over western comics, I really enjoyed this blended style. Ninja/venom/spiderman combination is an awesome character design. The fierce symbiote and many night-time scenes present the opportunity for lots of dark, dramatic panels that capture the gritty feel of superhero comics while remaining appropriate for young readers. There are clearly injuries, and a giant toothy alien thing taking over a human is always a spooky sight, but there's no gore.

This standalone just scratches the surface of potential stories for this style of historic superhero crossover in general, and Hyo specifically. It's impressive to fit an origin story and multiple big fights in a just few pages, and while this volume tells a complete story, it also works well as a potential introduction to a much larger adventure and superheroes with more to explore.

Pick this up for fans of comics, manga, and Into the Spiderverse.