Gwen is caught between two different identities and two different parallel universes. She’s from Earth-65, but she’s going to school in Earth-616. She’s Gwen Stacy, but she’s also the title character of a series which is one-issue old. It seems like the perfect time for Ghost-Spider Annual #1, right? The annual is a standalone story written by a Gwent Stacy creative team from the parallel dimension of writer Vita Ayala, artist Pere Pérez and colorist Rachelle Rosenberg. The writing feels a bit weaker than the regular series on more than one level. But Pérez’s art, though a bit repetitious, feels fresh and dynamic in a lightly enjoyable dance with a classic villain who originated in the late Bronze Age. 

Ghost-Spider Gwen is swinging about in Earth 616 one evening when she gets sucked into Murderworld. Completely unfamiliar with the twisted homicidal theme park ruled over by the sinister villain Arcade, Gwen’s in for a challenge. The world of disorientation, danger and all of the rest of what readers have come to know from Chris Claremont’s twisted assassin. In a standalone story that rests comfortable outside of the ongoing continuity of the character. 

Vita Ayala is such a cool writer. She’s got an amusing tilt to her writing that is both progressive and socially conscious when she’s properly motivated. It’s too bad she doesn’t actually do very much with the premise here. Arcade’s automated system thinks Gwen is Spider-Man. There’s a great opportunity for discussion of the nature of identity cast against a homicidal mechanized world. But Ayala never quite reaches for it. Granted...there IS a statement made on Gwen asserting her own identity in a world that doesn’t know her. (The entire Murderworld scenario was designed to mess with Peter Parker/Spider-Man’s head.) The assertion is fine and everything, but it lacks insight. It’s a pretty standard dance between hero and Arcade in Murderworld that is reasonably entertaining without reaching for anything more than Arcade’s been stuck with over the years. It’s okay, but it feels more like work-for-hire for Ayala than the deeper end of her work.

Pérez has an appealingly punchy sense of action that glides and flips from panel to panel. He’s not given a whole lot to bring to the page here, though. As this is a pretty standard Arcade/Murderworld story, Pérez is walking directly in the footsteps of some of the better comic book artists of the past including John Byrne and Alan Davis. Pérez smartly focusses much of the action directly on Ghost-Spider herself. Allowing the drama to focus quite squarely on her with Murderworld and Arcade resting somewhere in the background. Which makes this a very visually distinctive tangle in spite of the rather uninspired nature of the story. Pérez’s dynamic action is aided by Rachelle Rosenberg’s bright, cleverly atmospheric colors.

The basic elements of an extremely clever standalone story are clearly visible in this issue. It’s a really impressive creative team. Without a more inspired theme at the heart of it all, this annual is only capable of appealing on a very superficial level. Is it a displaced heroine mistaken for someone else by a theme park gone wrong? A premise like that deserves something deeper than Ayala was able to conjure here.

Grade: B-