Waiting for the Trade - Spider-man & Heroes for Hire

Waiting for the Trade

by Bill Miller

 

Heroes for Hire: Fear Itself

By Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning
collects Heroes for Hire 6-12
 

Why I Bought This: As I said in a few reviews now, a few months ago I decided to break my no event story policy for Fear Itself because it was allegedly Cap-centric. Of all the crossover trades this was the one I was most interested in just because it’s by DnA and their work on Guardians of the Galaxy a few years back earned them a ton of goodwill.

 

The Plot: Basically two separate stories. First, Spider-man team up with Paladin and Misty Knight to stop a smuggling ring. Then, the HforH heroes attempt deal with collateral damage from Fear Itself.

Chapter 1 – Paladin is taking on ninjas with bone weapons when Spidey arrives to lend a helping hand. Paladin and Spidey don’t like each other so Paladin attempts to solve the case on his own only to be attacked by Batroc the Leaper. Batroc wins their fight, leaving Paladin lying in the road with broken ribs. Misty hires Spider-man to assist (although he refuses to take any actual money).

Chapter 2 – Spidey tails the crooks to a warehouse and gets attacked by generic thugs with hellfire guns. Paladin is forced to take a taxi to the crime scene in a funny bit and then disobeys orders to seek medical treatment and goes off to join the fray. Spidey is now fighting Batroc and the bone ninjas. Batroc lures him into an arena where Spidey is attacked by Scorpion and a pack of velociraptors. Misty decides she has to go into the field to assist.

Chapter 3 – Paladin arrives and engages the bone ninjas while Spidey fights the dinosaurs and Scorpion. Paladin wins his fight only for the hellfire gun thugs to show up. Paladin then calls in Satana to exorcise their weapons. Misty arrives and battles Batroc. Spidey begins to turn the tide in his fight. Satana finishes her spell with the side effect of sending the thugs to Hell. Spidey defeats Batroc giving the heroes the win. Afterwards Misty decides someone is pulling the strings for all these villains and we learn it is Purple Man.

Chapter 4 – We see clips of the hammers falling in Fear Itself with one landing on Yancy Street and one on the Raft. Those are the two closest locations to NYC so Misty sends some heroes to investigate. On Yancy Street, Paladin meets the possessed Thing and tells Misty he is seriously outgunned. She sends Gargoyle to assist and his mystic powers give them a fighting chance. Meanwhile we meet a random scientist who was working on an experiment when Thing broke the city causing him to be doused in chemicals. At the Raft Shroud arrives and takes on some villains that are so F-list I’ve never even heard of them. He defeats a few on his own but as the numbers seem about to catch up on him Elektra arrives to assist—and in a funny touch Misty has to pay her double her normal rate not to kill anyone. Back to scientist dude who emerges from the chemical transformed into Monster: he looks like a Venom/Ghost Rider crossbreed but later we’ll learn he shape shifts into the greatest fear of whoever he faces. Meanwhile Purple Man is about to kill the comatose Puppet Master when Shroud and Elektra arrive. Purple Man takes control over the entire inmate population.

Chapter 5 – Shroud’s darkness power prevents Purple Man from seeing the inmates to coordinate their movements so that he and Elektra can take them all down. Back with the other two heroes where the Thing has left (presumably to go fight Red Hulk in the Avengers trade) and Paladin radios in how there was nothing they could do stop him from walking off so Misty assigns them to rescue civilians from collapsed buildings instead; and with no other heroes available due to the main crisis she decides she will be of more help by joining them in that task. On Yancy Street Gargoyle encounters Monster who he thinks is God condemning him for making a deal with demons years ago to get his powers. Monster turns Gargoyle to stone then confronts Paladin in the form of a superior superhero. Monster proceeds to beat Paladin to a bloody pulp. Back at the Raft Purple Man forces Shroud to turn off his darkness and then orders Elektra to kill him.

Chapter 6 – Monster is enjoying shape shifting into numerous forms to scare off every civilian he encounters. Misty is able to cure Gargoyle and awaken Paladin and by comparing notes she figures out what his powers are. She orders them away from the battle so she can face him one on one. Back at the Raft, Elektra shakes off the mind control and beats Purple Man into unconsciousness. This frees Shroud, and she reveals she used ninja skills to hold her breath throughout the entire fight scene last issue since Purple Man’s power is pheromone based so he couldn’t possess her. Purple Man recovers and escapes while she is talking to Shroud, who thinks she should have ignored her contract and just killed Purple Man when she had the chance. Meanwhile Misty confronts Monster and forces him to shape shift into a scared little boy as her greatest fear is the child she lost prior to issue 1 of this series in the pages of Iron Fist. The heroes then go back to helping refugees.

Chapter 7 – Misty is tracking down a drug trafficking organization that has roots in Atlantis. She attacks them on multiple fronts at once with Moon Knight in LA, Silver Sable & Paladin on Coney Island, and Sting Ray at sea. While the first two operations shut down their U.S. importing operations on both coasts, Sting Ray’s fight is the key to her strategy as it gets Namor’s attention. She tells Namor about the drug ring and that while she can stop the human distributors the root of the problem are the suppliers in Atlantis. Namor vows to shut them down within one week. Paladin and Misty then celebrate a job well done as this series comes to an end (with the already reviewed Villains for Hire miniseries tying up the loose end of the Purple Man’s escape afterwards).

 

Critical Thoughts: Definitely a tale of two stories here. The Spiderman half is a lot of fun and worth reading if you enjoy a light-hearted take on the character. The Fear Itself half is your usual subpar crossover nonsense.

For the Spidey stuff, I want to commend DnA on this. The story has several legitimate laugh out loud moments. DnA gets the tone of Spider-man’s banter right and captures the proper pace for a second tier Spider-man adventure story. The art by Brad Walker also looks really good here. I also liked the interpretation of the villains in this story. Again these are second tier villains and I’d say they are portrayed at just about the right threat level: way over Paladin’s league but only in Spidey’s league because they’ve combined forces. Heck even the henchman are fun: bone ninjas, dinosaurs and hellfire guns: now that is jsut a weird and wacky combination.

The Fear Itself stuff isn’t completely terrible but it’s also not nearly as good as the first story. As a longtime fan of the Defenders I liked seeing Gargoyle and I think his portrayal, particularly his greatest fear, is very much in character for his origins. I also think it is a credit to Misty to show she knows her team’s limitations. They can’t fight the main threat in Fear Itself so they concentrate on helping civilians and stopping a prison riot. Of course if you bought this off the rack because you were digging Fear Itself you’d probably feel ripped off since this thing is only tangentially related to the main story with hammer Thing appearing for all of three pages.

I think the wrap-up issue does its job well enough. One thing I liked about this series was DnA’s take on what each characters accepts as payment to join the team per mission. While quite a few just take cash, seeing someone like Sting Ray have his payment sent to a non-profit oceanographic institute show’s DnA puts thought into even the C-list heroes they use. Still if you want to sample DnA for the first time, this series never once hits the tremendous peaks of Guardians of the Galaxy, so pick that up instead.

One little complaint: the back cover features Black Cat in the art, who is one of my very favorite characters, yet she never appears in this trade. Well, and for continuity geeks I have to point out Namor claims to have never heard of Heroes for Hire even though he was the company’s chief financial backer when they both had a series in the late 90s.

 

Grade: The Spidey story is a fun B+, the rest is probably a C-. Let’s call it a C+ overall.