Spider-Man Noir (2020) Issue 3

Spider-Man Noir (2020) Issue #3

Written by Margaret Stohl

Art by Juan Ferreyra

Cover art by Dave Rapoza

All of my fears have been confirmed and I'm a little disappointed.

Okay okay, let’s back up. This issue, like the previous ones, is really fun and exciting. The opening fight with a Nazi version of Electro is huge and gives us lots of really dynamic and interesting panels which are just a joy. Spidey’s inner monologue is witty and engaging.

After a timely rescue from an appropriately re-imagined Tony Stark, working as an American spy in Germany, our intrepid heroes find themselves flying to the near east, but not before another run-in with Electro. Nearly crashing into the Alps after an artificial storm Electro brewed up (this sequence, in which Spider-Man uses his webs, heightened strength and raw courage to manually steer the plane over a mountain top, is one of my favourites in the series so far) the gang meet yet another contact in Istanbul.

The noir version of Black Widow is a welcome addition to this rag tag group, but it’s getting just a little bit crowded. How many other characters and themes from the outside comics world are we going to see painted black and white and thrown in this adventure?

Black Widow fills us in. The Nazis have been digging up a Babylonian ruin, the same place where the cicada-shaped amulet that started this whole adventure came from. The team heads out into the desert toward the ruin when they’re ambushed by soldiers.

A firefight breaks out, but before long, the good doctor Huma Burgmann proves she’s not so good after all, but has been a Nazi double agent this whole time.

Now...

I suspected something like this would happen. It’s almost funny how on the nose I was in my previous post when I mentioned I was worried this precise thing was going to happen. That said, I feel like this came out of nowhere and doesn’t fit very well in the story so far.

It was Huma’s sister who had the amulet and was murdered. It was Huma’s mentor who was murdered by Electro in Germany as part of a trap to kill Spider-Man. I’ve read these three issues at least twice each now, and I can’t see any foreshadowing or hints that this double cross was going to take place, except for the genre this series is trying to emulate. The Femme Fatale is always supposed to double cross the hero, so she does here.

Maybe the next issue will shed more light on this, but so far I’m unimpressed with this specific plot point. Other than that, I remain deeply impressed. There are so many panels in this series that are so deeply expressive and intriguing that I love going back just to look at them for minutes at a time.

Things are really gaining speed in this series, and with only two more issues to go, I’m excited to see what’s next.