Today’s post is a recap and review of the comic W.E.B. of Spider-Man, which recently finished up its five issue run. I love Spider-Man and was excited to see him join up with a new team even if only for five issues!

Recap (Spoiler Alert!)

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The story begins with Peter Parker explaining he is a founding member of the Worldwide Engineering Brigade created by Tony Stark, which brings together some of the most brilliant young minds from around the world. Peter is excited to participate in something that can highlight his talents outside of Spider-Man. He arrives for his first day with the new team and introduces himself to everyone. They immediately start posturing over who is smarter until a glitch happens in the computer system leading to the creation of what appears to be holograms of different villains come to life. The holograms begin targeting W.E.B. classified data banks, and all the W.E.B. members begin attacking with no coordinated plan. Unsurprisingly, their clumsy attacks go wrong, and they wind up floating around the room. Peter decides to cut power to the building to try to turn off the holograms, but it doesn’t work, which means they are not holograms but viruses with an external power source. Peter suits up as Spider-Man while the others are distracted and convinces them to work as a team. One by one they use their inventions and powers to take down the viruses, but each time they destroy one, the others gain in power and size. Eventually, only one virus is left, the Green Goblin look alike, and he is huge.

Spider-Man attempts to fight the Green Goblin virus, but he’s no match for him alone. The rest of the team decides to use the same tactics as before on this one remaining virus, but it doesn’t work. He’s too strong. The virus abruptly disappears, along with the data he has stolen. The team decides to search the building for whoever was controlling the virus. Spider-Man heads to the roof where he finds the actual Green Goblin, who almost blows Spider-Man up. Spider-Man shoots his web at the Green Goblin and sticks to his glider just as he is taking off. They go flying off the building and down into the subway tunnels with the rest of the W.E.B. team in pursuit. Using earpieces, they come up with a plan to funnel the Green Goblin back to the station closest to W.E.B. headquarters so that they can use a de-magnetizer to erase the stolen data. The plan works, but Spider-Man is suspicious about the Green Goblin because he notices there is something different about him. However, he cannot investigate his suspicions as the Green Goblin has disappeared. The team begins to celebrate their victory until Iron Man shows up wanting answers to why a large part of the city is without power. It seems the de-magnetizer had quite the effect.

Iron Man is livid that the W.E.B. team knocked out the power and decides they cannot be trusted when left on their own. So, he decides to send them on a private plane to France to oversee the completion of the W.E.B. facility in Paris while chaperoned by the pilots. As the plane is descending into Paris, the Green Goblin appears out of nowhere and attacks the plane. It causes an electrical surge, which knocks out the pilots. The plane begins to fall until Peter uses his webshooter to pull up on the wing flap lever and causes the plane to soar back into the air. The team then tries to figure out how to land the plane. They decide to attempt to rotate the engines manually so that they can be used as thrusters to help them glide to the surface. Thanks goodness for that Avengers tech. The only problem is the plane still has no power to ignite them. Peter has them smash out the plane’s windows and uses his webshooters to pull the engines into position to help slow down their descent. Another member of their team is able to reboot the plane just in time to fire the thrusters. When they leave the plane, spider-bots are waiting to take them to the W.E.B. headquarters in Paris, but the team decides a little sightseeing is in order after their near death experience. Eventually they make their way to the headquarters, and are surprised to find Amadeus Cho waiting for them.

Amadeus Cho starts berating them as soon as they walk through the door and indicates that one of them must be the Green Goblin’s target instead of the data since he seems to be after them even when no data is involved. Peter speaks up and voices his concern that it is not really the Green Goblin at all. Amadeus decides to do some research, and is interrupted by a hologram of Iron Man, who commends the team for saving his plane and lets them know none of the suspects they are researching were involved. Then the hologram unexpectedly attacks them after the real Iron Man has seemingly disconnected. A fight ensues that leaves a hole in the headquarters through which Green Goblin comes crawling. A fight ensues that causes the team to split up; half of them go fight Green Goblin to save the city and the other half stay to fight the Iron Man virus. The team left in the headquarters uses headsets to enter the computer system to fight the virus while Amadeus Cho, Squirrel Girl, and Peter chase after the Green Goblin. The team inside the computer decided to become a virus themselves to infect the Iron Man virus that is stealing all their data. They quickly defeat the virus. Back in the city, the others are fighting Green Goblin and Squirrel Girl recognizes that he is made from artificial flesh. Now that the virus is gone, the team inside the computer decides to look for markers that could identify its creator, and they are surprised to find out it is Mendel Stromm, whose brain apparently lives on in the form of Cy-Gob.

Cy-Gob is determined to get all the information on W.E.B. he can find, which leads to an all out brawl in Paris. He overloads all the spider-bots that were helping the W.E.B. team fight him. Then the rest of the team shows up to the fight now that they have defeated the virus. They begin to attack Cy-Gob, but he doesn’t seem to care about damage to his body. He has learned how to move his consciousness along any wireless internet connection and starts hopping from device to device before jumping back into his body and throwing a bomb at the team. In the smoke, Cy-Gob disappears and the team receives a report he is headed toward the Louvre to potentially attack a lab located underneath it. They go there as quickly as possible, but Cy-Gob has already weaponized the particle accelerator from the lab and uses it to attack them. It turns out he plans to use the accelerator to restructure the atoms in the team’s cerebral cortices so he can fuse them with his own and take their intelligence. They quickly come up with a plan to use some of the Louvre’s mirrors to reflect his particle beam back at him and finally defeat him. Then the team is hailed as heroes by the Louvre administrators and they all decide to continue working together to create something great.

My Review

I didn’t really know anything about this story going into it other than it was another Spider-Man story. It seemed separate from the Amazing Spider-Man continuity, which is the story I follow most often, but it also sounded interesting with Spider-Man becoming part of a new team. The story was good, and I enjoyed seeing Peter get to shine a bit outside of the costume. He was definitely in his element and able to use his intelligence. It was also intriguing to see him struggle a bit with wanting to be known for more than just Spider-Man. The tone of the story was pretty light, and it seemed geared towards younger readers. However, I still enjoyed it. My favorite parts were when the team entered the computer system to fight the virus and when they were trying to figure out how to land the plane. Overall, it was a fun read with some cool concepts and nice art that taught a valuable lesson about teamwork.