Edge of Spider-Verse

Spider-Verse #4

by Dan Slott, Alex Segura, Karla Pacheco

The end of the Spider-Verse is coming! The original saga brought you Spider Gwen, Peni Parker and more instantly iconic web-slingers.

This final epic will take you to the bleeding edge of the Spider-Verse, reacquainting you with old favourites and introducing you to some of the most important characters you haven't met yet... but it will also slice the final strand of the web.

Featuring Spider-Ham, Spider-Gwen, the Spider-Mobile and Spider-Man Noir! Discover Arana's new status quo! Learn the legacy of Spider-UK! Meet the sensational Spider-Rex! The singing princess, Spinstress! Sergei Kravinoff... the Hunter Spider! The amazing Sun Spider... and the mysterious Night-Spider! And much, much more!

Collecting: Edge of Spider-Verse (2022) #1-5.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Marvel, Spider Man, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Superheroes

168 pages, Paperback

First published February 14, 2023

About the author

Dan Slott is an American comic book writer, the current writer on Marvel Comics' The Amazing Spider-Man, and is best known for his work on books such as Arkham Asylum: Living Hell, She-Hulk, Silver Surfer, The Superior Spider-Man, and Ren & Stimpy.

Reviews

[Khurram · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the stories/threads of the main story, I would have given this book 4 stars for the looser or just plain weird stories I would have given them 3 stars, so I would have liked to give it 3.5 stars it just just edged a round-up for me.

The Spider-verse is in danger again. Guardians will be chosen, some will rise, and some will fall. See the origin of the Spider-verse and the original sin that has come back to the Spiders.

The main story starring Arana, Night-Spider, Hunter Spider, Spider UK (on a personal note, great to see a Muslim hero done right), and Spider-Gwen were good to very good. The filler-style stories were okay to just plain weird. The book finishes with a variant cover gallery, including sketch covers.

[Mohan Vemulapalli · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one is a little uneven, but a lot of fun. Fans of the Spider-verse should find something in this collection of short stories. The frame story has Madame Webb traveling through the Spider-verse to recruit a host of spider people to fight a great evil that never appears and is barely described

The real draw of this book though is the multitude of the spider people with which Madame Webb comes into contact. Some are fairly well known, such as the always intriguing Spider-Noir, the fabulous Peter Porker and the very taste specific Spider T-Rex among others.

A number of other characters are newer, or appear for the first time . Of particular note is the Spinstress, who is the Spider-Verse's version of a Disney princess with her very own fairy Gob Mother, who is of course named Norma. Also of note is the Web-Weaver, Perter Parker's Gay fashion forward room-mate, who in his universe took a spider for the team and wound up with great powers, great responsibility and killer style.

All in all this really is a fun book and Dan Slot's influence is obvious throughout. Fans of the Spider-verse should definitely pick this one up if only to take a peak at all the different fabulous spider people.

[Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome collection! So many fun characters! Loved the return of characters like Spider-Ham and Sakura Spider plus all the fun additions and expansions to the Spiderverse with characters like Sun-Spider, Spider-Mobile, Spider-Rex, etc. This is such a fun mix of great stories, whimsical and surprising short stories, and retellings of familiar Spider-Man characters.

[Green Megs &Ham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Imaginative, cute, and funny. But I can only read a spider-(insert noun here) so many times...

[Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's been a LOT of Spider-Verse stories in the Marvel Universe. Heck, its been around since 2014. Plenty of time to riff on alternate universe versions of Spider-Man. Its been so popular that Sony even made a movie (soon to be more) with some of the more popular characters.

All good things must come to an end.
(those things must also be collected and packaged as a setup for the next Spider-Man comicbook too)
-------
It's just the right size to give you a good amount of short stories with new characters. Luckily, Spider-Man is still crazy popular ('Across the Spider-Verse is coming out later in 2023). Might be the perfect time to put this idea to rest on a high note. You don't want to go back to the well one time too many.

Bonus: Back to the spider totem and animal hunting schtick. This time it's Wasps vs Spiders
Bonus Bonus: Must have been a slow day. A very Disney 'Spider-Mobile' in a Cars (Marvel is still Disney, right?) universe AND a very Cinderella inspired (maybe even a little 'Beauty and the Beast') Spinstress

[Belfry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Torn between a 2.5 and a 3 for this one. A real mixed bag

[Subham · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was weirdly fun and also.. not fun.

Another spider-verse sigh. At some point Marvel needs to like stop redoing these stories but thats not gonna happen. But well here we have another origins of new Spider variants or like continuing stories with the old established ones and I kinda enjoyed some and the others were flat out terrible.

The Dinosaur one while short was fun, Spider-UK and Night-Spider were perfect and its something I can see spin-offs of and would love to read them, the felicia design was fun and her story was origins and establishes some fun dynamics there, also loving how Madame web drops in for a quick cameo gathering all the spider-heroes for the big event and the villain Shathra aka Spider-wasp gets established as the main antagonist and I'd be interested to see whats happening there.

The other stories like Sun spider, Spider with the yellow spider suit and the last one were flat out terrible and not even funny and kinda spoiled the fun of reading the series but maybe in the hands of some other good writer, they will be better but thats high hopes from marvel.

So yeah overall hits and misses like with any anthology and it also does well to establish the big threat and I'd be interested to see how Spider-man aka main Peter will feature in this as the story continues in his solo!

P.S. I loved the Spider-mobile and really want an animated movie of his haha!

[Timothy Pitkin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of creative ideas but it seems that there are to many ideas as some of them are shorten down to about four pages and not given enough time to really expand the idea. One of my favorites Spider Rex feels like it barely got started and there are so many others that I wished were expanded on and given more time. I do like that some of them alter the artwork to better fit their theme like Spider Sakura having a magical girl anime feel and Spinstress that has an overt disney feel including a musical number. A good collection that could have been a lot better if all of the spider variants had more room to breath I would not mind if this become a regular series with each issue being an entire adventure with a different Spider Variant.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Collects EDGE OF SPIDER-VERSE (2022) issues #1-5

Dan Slott returns for another "Spider-Verse" story, so I wanted to check it out. Slott's run on "Amazing Spider-Man" is one of my favorites, and I'm happy to see him writing "Spider-Man" regularly again.

This collection introduced new spider variants like Spider-Rex, Princess Spinstress, Sergei Kravinoff, the Hunter-Spider, Sun-Spider, and Night-Spider.

This whole collection acts as a lead-in to Slott's new ongoing title called "Spider-Man," and I happened to have already read the first eleven issues of that prior to reading this.

Even though this is a collection of short stories that introduce characters that will appear in a different story, I still enjoyed this reading.

[Blake Jarvis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I needed a break from heavy comic book stories (Fatale) and repetitive airport thrillers, so I decided to give Edge of Spider-Verse (2014) a shot. This collection dives into variants of the classic Spider-Man character, offering glimpses into their backstories, origins, and a quick face-off with a villain before Madame Web (yes, the same Madame Web as in the 2024 movie) arrives to warn them of an impending multiverse war that will need every Spider-hero.

It’s light, fun reading with some memorable Spider-variants. Standouts for me were Ghost-Spider, Night-Spider, Spinstress, Spider-Mobile, and Hunter-Spider. While this is just an appetizer for the main Spider-Verse saga, it’s a refreshing break before diving back into more serious fare.

[Chris Lemmerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's another Spider-Verse movie on the horizon and Dan Slott's coming back for a Spider-Verse series, so of course, it's time for another Edge Of Spider-Verse mini-series.

This is an anthology book, so you know what you're gonna get - some great stuff, some not so great stuff - but the overall throughline is pretty solid. There aren't many stories that I didn't enjoy, and the ones I really liked were fantastic (I would read an entire series about Princess Spinstress, seriously).

Not much else to say other than that, really. Not necessary reading for the new Slott Spider-Man series, but it does shed some light on a few important players there. Your mileage may vary.

[Rocky Sunico · Rating 3 out of 5]

But now we all understand the format - the Edge of... books introduce new characters while prepping us for the main event. And while there were some interesting new Spider-people in this comic, on the whole it felt like it was more fun tangential reading and not all that essential to the main plot as they barely touched on that. Instead, we have a pretty diverse collection of one-off stories with the only connection being the new character being recruited to participate in the coming conflict.

It was okay, but by now you'd think they'd innovate a bit more or have a somewhat tighter meta-plot tying things together. It doesn't bode all that well for the main story, I have to admit.

[Sarah]

spider-man noir is a cheater? don't like that.


really like the princess. the singing is kinda annoying but it's a fun one. and the web gown is gorgeous. the price of powers being never able to fall in love, like that. very fairy tale. and ofc, like a true spider, she chooses saving others over her own personal happiness. love that she's got a crown in her spider fit. it looks so cool. but also girl who you tryna fool here lol
I'm nOt ThE pRinCesS says the girl wearing a tiara. sure ok. I believe you lol

[Rhys Causon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should have definitely read this before End of the Spider-Verse as it has kind of negated my main problems with the characters involved in that story.

And each little story was enjoyable in its own way despite how different each world was. Personally my favourite joke was from the Car universe because it blindsided me because of how it took me several times to read it properly (Mr. Reo Speedbuggy)

Helpful backstory elements for a tie in to the main book and enjoyable on its own.

[Jenna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe reading this after seeing the second movie, as well as rewatching No Way Home and Into the Spider-Verse was a bad idea, as all of the stories just felt completely repetitive and tedious. I did like some of the character designs but none really caught my attention and I automatically skimmed the large number of dialogue text boxes from our Noir Spider-Man.

[Chad · Rating 2 out of 5]

More Spider-People variants. Are we done with this yet? The more variants I see in the Marvel universe, the less thrilled I am. Where as I'm completely opposite with the movies. They are terrific. I guess it's the difference between this being a more or less try out book and the movies getting A list talent.

[Will Plunkett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this collection on the spring equinox (and you can't spell most of SPIdeR-maN without "spring" you know!), and while some of it was just put-put looney tunes (Spider-Rex? Spider-Mobile, Pete "no hyphen" Spiderman?), I enjoyed the scattering of characters' short stories (reminded me of early Marvel Comics Presents issues) and the different art styles.

[Felipe Posada · Rating 5 out of 5]

Por supuesto que llegué a este cómic por la gran película" Spider-Man a través del spiderverso" y fue hermoso.
Gran historia, unos villanos aterradores, ver diversas versiones del arácnido y como deben lidiar con esta amenaza.
¡Gran cómic!

[Eva B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO MUCH FUN! Spider-Noir was in here so obviously that was amazing (plus a brief appearance by Jan!) and I absolutely love Spider-UK and Sun-Spider, who has the same joint disorder that I probably have <3

[Cora · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a bunch of short intros to spider people connected by a call for action to fight a big bad from madame web. Some of the stories are interesting (like spider uk) but all of them were just so short it was hard to care. It was worth the 3 stars just because the designs and art.

[Megan Brooks]

mixed bag

[John Myers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved seeing a fem boy spiderman so much. i hope he gets his own series. the male silk was a fun treat too.

[Steve Howells · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cool read lots of different Spideys

[Danii Savage · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spider-Ham is best boi.

[Daniel Butcher · Rating 2 out of 5]

I struggled to connect with both the new and old spiders….expect for Peter Spiderman(no hyphen).

[Andja · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[M.i. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Decent collection of spider men and women traversing the spider-verse, preparing for impending doom.

[Justin Greer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was insane and I loved every second of it.

[Tia Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few of the stories I loved more than the others but overall super fun and cute.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely a mixed bag. My favorite wias Spinstress spoofing Disney Princesses.