Oh, you rascally Superior Foes of Spider-Man. You have Spider-Man in your title and you have very little to do with him at all, and now you’re hilariously turning on each other within your half-assed Sinister Five.
Nick Spencer and Steve Lieber continue the misadventures of low-rent supervillains trying to make good… er, make bad… er, break bad?… in the Big Apple, where nearly every super person in the world lives. It’s hard for a villain team to succeed when their leader, in this case Boomerang, sold them all out and got robbed of his ill-gotten loot for his trouble. Superior Foes of Spider-Man #8 gets into Boomerang’s head, opening with a dream sequence that takes place while he’s getting his ass kicked by Chameleon’s goon. It seems Ol’ Fred promised the legit Sinister Sixer the head of Silvermane – a long sought-after prize believed to be an urban legend – in order to con his way out of prison. Unfortunately, he didn’t think far enough ahead to what he’d do when Chameleon actually came calling to collect. He was too busy double-crossing his teammates and leaving them at the mercy of The Owl in order to abscond with a rare painting of Dr. Doom without his mask.
The trio he sold out – Beetle, Speed Demon and Overdrive – managed to spring themselves once Beetle called in a favor with her daddykins, one burly heavy known as Tombstone. And then there’s Shocker, the guy he locked in a trunk and tried to kill, who escaped and who has actually found the head of Silvermane – a cantankerous old crimelord who turned himself into a cyborg to stay alive. His head is still alive. And his head can beat Shocker in a fight. Poor Shocker. No respect.
Basically, this issue is everything blowing up in Boomerang’s face, and then his pseudo-girlfriend learning that he’s a supervillain by trade and then giving him a kick in the pants to be better at his job. Also, this issue is just as entertaining as the rest of the series, where Spencer and Lieber are having fun with C-list wiseguy types snarking, conniving, backstabbing and being weirdly lovable in the process. It’s a good-time book about bad guys that are probably only bad because good is too hard, even though bad ain’t particularly easy, either.
Superior Foes of Spider-Man is going to need a new name soon, once Superior Spider-Man gives up the ghost. Maybe they’ll become the Amazing Foes of Spider-Man. The Spectacular Foes... the U-Foes, no, wait, that’s taken. Okay, I’m taking suggestions, but also suggesting that you should be reading this book if you like morally ambiguous good-time comics.
