Spawn #355 // Review
There’s blood splattering everywhere. Eddie just tore the skin and muscle off his chest. Ribs are clearly visible. He looks like he’s in agony. Naturally, this is going to be a bit of a shock to the two people in the same room. They’re going to act quickly to try to save him, but maybe he’s well beyond saving in Spawn #355. Writers Rory McConville and Todd McFarlane continue a long and winding epic that goes back many years. The visual reality of this month’s particular hell comes to the page courtesy of artist Brett Booth, inker Adelso Corona and colorist Robert Nugent.
Eddie isn’t doing okay. The best way to help him is to kill him...sort of. He's blasted lifeless on the floor of the old safe house, but he’ll be fine. His body will heal himself. Only question is: what’s he going to do when he wakes-up? Eddie isn’t in control of his own body. Bludd is controlling him...and he’s forcing him to try to kill himself. How is ANYONE going to avoid THAT? Great power is at work and it’s making things hellishly complicated for Spawn and company. If he’s going to be able to take down Bludd, he’s going to need to ally himself with the right people...
McConville weaves a perfectly good chapter of a long-running conflict. Over the years, the plot of Spawn has lapped itself more than a few times in more than a few ways. There are echoes of the past that positively overwhelm the current story that’s going on. McConville doesn’t quite manage anything significantly new with the latest chapter and there are only a few moments here and there that feel all that interesting. It’s just a lot of talk leading into what will likely be the next major slugfest. Yawn.
Booth and Corona lock-in the intensity of the drama quite well. The horror of watching someone try to pry open their own chest with their bare hands hits the page quite solidly, but not with the kind of intensity it deserves. Booth and Corona’s Spawn is particularly expressive for a variety of reasons. McFarlane had largely been pretty incompetent at trying to give the central character a whole lot of emotional range on the page in the visual realm, but Booth and Corona do a solidly good job of executing the emotional toll that the events are taking on the title character.
The long and twisted story of Spawn continues in another chapter that seems pretty indistinguishable from so many of the rest of them. There’s a sense that there might be some kind of something leading from the current situation, but it’s very difficult to tell and even more difficult to care aside from a few moments of genuine horror drama that crawl and splatter across the page. The good news is that it all looks pretty good while it’s doing what it’s doing and that goes a long way towards maintaining the life of a long-running series.
