Spider-Gwen: Gwenverse #2 // Review
Gwen Stacy had been living in one universe and going to college in an entirely different universe. Things were complicated enough as it was. Recently she found herself facing the prospect of having to deal with various other selves from various other universes. Things have become that much more difficult in Spider-Gwen: Gwenverse. The mini-series enters its second issue in another chapter written by Tim Seeley with art by Jodi Nishijima. Though it's kind of fun, the script tries to cram way too much into a single issue, and it comes across like a charmingly scattered mess.
Gwen is hanging out with a version of herself that wields Mjölnir and speaks in a different font. Each of her other incarnations has a different side of her personality. Thor-Gwen is a boastful show-off—which could be a bit of a headache as she is trying to keep a low profile while searching for the rest of herselves. It's not going to be easy making a connection with Captain Ameri-Gwen, who harnesses all of her more altruistic notions…a situation which can only be complicated by the sudden appearance of wild girl Wolvergwen. She's clearly got quite a lot of inner conflict to work her way through.
Seeley's psychoanalysis of Gwen would be a lot more fun if the story was given a bit more space to develop. The crazy energy of things clashing and crashing into each other doesn't feel wild so much as it does…rushed and unsatisfying. The humor keeps everything from being taken too seriously. Still, the irreverence of the comedy tends to grate against Gwen's struggles in a way that compromises the action that filters through the issue. It's an erratic adventure that never quite manages to find any of the scenes framed well enough to work.
Nishijima has a firm grasp of the delicate balance between action, humor, and drama necessary to pull everything together. Too bad Seeley's script is so scattered. Big moments in the story would feel that much more refreshingly weird if Nishijima was given just a bit more room on the page to explore them. Seeley's script demands that far too much happen on any individual page for the story to ever have a chance of delivering on its visual potential.
It's a really clever idea that Seeley is working with. If he was just a little bit better at framing the action, he would be able to find a better way to break up the action and the drama to feel a bit more coherent. A team of Gwens would be a lot of fun. In theory, Seeley could really ramp up a whole Agwengers saga with the same girl replicated across all the different hero archetypes. Still, as it is, he's not taking the joke seriously enough for it to really develop into anything anywhere near as interesting as it could be.
