Last week I reviewed XMEN NOIR and was horribly disappointed in the work. The storyline was convoluted, the art was static and the inking was way too dark. All in all, it felt like something that was done by a lesser publisher and did not live up to the MARVEL standard. With a heavy heart, I moved on to SPIDERMAN NOIR, the next NOIR title on my list to be disappointed in.

The only thing that was disappointed was my sense of cynicism.

SPIDERMAN NOIR, written by David Hine and Fabrice Sapolsky with art by Carmine Di Giandomenico blew me away. Set in 1933 during the Great Depression, SPIDERMAN NOIR initially follows reporter Ben Urich, and his interactions with an uncharacteristically angry and embittered Peter Parker. Ben takes Peter under his wing as a photojournalist and learns that Peter is on a personal quest to take down Norman Osborn for killing his uncle Ben. But Parker is powerless against Osborn, a.k.a. The Goblin and his band of circus freak henchmen.

Until he’s bitten by a spider.

Here is where SPIDERMAN NOIR does so much right for me. In XMEN NOIR there were no mutants. Just different levels of social deviancy and depravity. But in this title, Peter Parker still gets his powers in a familiar though drastically different way. Hine and Sapolsky make the transformation almost mystical in nature rather than scientific, something that I really dig and feel fits into the whole noir/pulp horror genre that these titles are trying to emulate. The characters are both familiar and radically original. I enjoyed each and every panel better than the last.

What also stands out to me is the art in this book. I know it’s supposed to be NOIR, buy why make a bleak world bleaker by washing everything out in shadowy blacks and dusky browns the way they did in XMEN NOIR? Giandomenico does a fantastic job of delivering gritty art that doesn’t sacrifice character reactions and emotional states. He lightened the color pallet a couple hues, and added splashes of color to enhance the drama of each panel.