REVIEW: Spider-Man: Mighty Mayhem!
Spider-Man: Mighty Mayhem!
By Mike Maihack
Abrams Fanfare/96 pagers/$12.99
After teaming up with the Avengers, Fantastic Four, and the Guardians of the Galaxy, Mike Maihack is back pairing your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man with the Throg and the Norse gods of Asgard.
The Enchantress has turned the thunder god back into his frog form, and the rest of the Asgardians have been similarly transformed into odd objects or animals (a lovely chance to work in the alligator Loki). As a result, Odin, the one-eyed radio, turns to the wall-crawler for help, accompanied by Steve the bird, providing the reader with a fast-paced tour of the nine realms according to Norse myth. Spider-Man must find these ordinary objects (which are actually powerful artifacts) before the Enchantress does.
Along the way, familiar faces from previous volumes (complete with footnotes), and Spidey does his level best to help the plagued gods. His humor and sense of responsibility are intact despite the chaos. In some ways, Maihack swerves too much into the oddities and definitely relies too much on Steve, rather than the title character, to get things done.
It’s a shame that Sif and the Warriors Three are mostly sidelined here (as they have been in the feature films), but they do make their presence felt.
Maihack nicely bookends the story with Spidey’s own conflict with the Rhino, along with a fun running gag involving ice cream. There’s even a post-credit sequence.
Aimed at readers 6-9, the book will most definitely satisfy and amuse them.
