Deadly Foes of Spider-Man 1 page 30 by Kerry Gammill & Mike Machlan

A great Spidey villains page by the always impeccable Kerry Gammill.

This mini series featured that team of b or c-lister villains and sadly only offered partial art by Mr Gammill on the first two issues. The split art chores may seem strange for a mini series but if you look at the top of the page, you will see a crossed Marvel Comics presents stamp. So my educated guess would be that this story was probably commissioned by Marvel for that format, 8 to 10 page at a time and later repurposed as a mini. Ok that’s it for the Back Issue kind of trivia 😊

As always, Gammill is perfect at staging the characters within the page, using great different shots to keep the reader’s eye interested and at body language and conveying emotions.

In panel 1, you can really feel the impact and surprise of the water beam on Beetle. The fact that it comes from behind seems coherent for villains who are not concerned with fairness in a fight.

In panel 2 the different in size with the Rhino is well established and seemingly easily despite the reduced space. We are talking a Hulk sized character effortlessly picking up a heavy armored one. Beetle seems still rattled and Gammill even managed to insert an angry Hydroman. I love how water is falling on the ground from his body.

In panel 3, the distress of the Beetle is perfectly drawn. You can see from his face and gestures he knows he is in big trouble. The fact that Rhino is holding him by the neck and from behind adds to his helplessness. Again, great artistic choice.

Panel 4 shows us a great close up on the Rhino who looks dangerous and angry here. The character often looks like a joke on page. Well, not here. Typical Gammill hand gesture as well.

In panel 5, we have a complete change of camera approach to the scene to great effect. Beetle is sill distressed and the other are coming at him still.

Panel 6 has a fun tossing of the Beetle. As I’ve said above, this is a heavy armored character and yet Gammill manages to make it looks like the Rhino is throwing a toy.

The Last panel steals the show as the Beetle laying on the ground on the foreground gives a splashy feeling to the page whereas it counts 7 panels. You can really feel the pain of the Beetle’s sore neck here. This is great, great use of layout.

I’m underlying all of this to emphasize of masterful a storyteller Gammill is. This is a packed 7 panels page with tons of unnecessary text & dialogues and yet all of this looks absolutely E-FFORT-LESS and remains super fluid throughout. The amount of visual information and details he manages to infuse within the page is incredible (and I’m not talking pure detail as adding tiny lines on top of tiny lines doesn’t serve storytelling). You basically don’t need to read any dialogue or text to understand what’s going on.

The inks by Machlan are competent enough but I’m not a big fan which is surprising as one could theoretically think they would mesh better, considering they come from the same artistic school.