James Review -- Spider-Man: Hostile Takeover

This week I decided to review Spider-man: Hostile Takeover by David Liss. 

The story begins shortly after Wilson Fisk, AKA Kingpin, returns to New York claiming to have reformed into a benevolent philanthropist. While roaming the city, Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man, hears of a robbery at a Snake store and moves to intervene. He captures the thief, a young man named Andy. To convince Spider-man to let him go, Andy tells Parker of a supervillain active at a nearby construction site. Parker arrives at the site and defeats a handful of thugs but is ambushed by a new enemy able to match both his moves and his abilities.

Parker returns to Andy to find the would-be thief dead and is soon confronted by police lieutenant Yuri Watanabe who reveals that Andy had been murdered by a impostor Spider-Man, known to be an impostor due to slight errors in his costume. Watanabe also reveals that the construction site Spider-Man was ambushed at secretly belongs to Fisk, and Watanabe, who also wishes to bring Fisk down, forms a secret alliance with Parker.

Soon after this, the fake Spider-Man begins a series of actions designed to ruin Spider-Man’s reputation. And the conflict becomes more personal when one of these incidents leads to the death of Anika Adhikari, a young woman who had recently started working at the same research lab as Parker. Eventually, Parker and Watanabe realize that the fake Spider-man is just a diversion meant to distract Parker while Fisk makes his bid to become New York City’s Commissioner of Finance, a position that would let him cripple the city’s economy if angered or threatened, and the race to find a way to stop him is on.

Meanwhile, Maya Lopez, Fisk’s foster daughter who believes that Spider-Man had murdered her father years earlier, sets out to claim her vengeance. Her combat abilities, combined with years of studying Spider-Man make her just as dangerous as the impostor. And soon Parker is desperately struggling to find a way to convince her of his innocence before its too late…

I give this book 9.5 out of 10. It has a very interesting story and I enjoyed the battle sequences and the investigation plotline. However, there are a few areas that I felt needed more detail. Also, I question the necessity of killing Anika Adhikari. Sure, it gave Spider-man more motivation to hunt down the impostor, but I think he already had plenty of reason to go after him, and until she was killed, Adhikari had potential for interesting plotlines in future material.