The Spider And Scavengers Of The Slaughtered Sacrifices!

The Spider - Scavengers of the Slaughtered Sacrifices is a weird and wild ride courtesy of writer Don McGregor and artist Gene Colan. Produced for both Vanguard and Argosy publishing this is a ninety-one-page graphic novel starring the pulp hero The Spider as he attempts to stop a nasty serial killer who is taking his inspiration for his crimes from popular television shows. 

This same year of 2002 Gene Colan also produced a strange wordless Spider story which I talked about in a post a few days ago. Now we get the full unleashed Colan using multiple panels to tell the story of this murderer who seems intent on sending a message about the violence in media by practicing that violence in real life. The Spider is also contending with two strident advocates of morality who are using the murders to provoke legislation which will chill First Amendment rights in the country. Their names are "Sammy Teton" and "Ripper Law". I cannot suss the first one, but I guess the second is a reference to Tipper Gore who infamously led a moral outrage campaign in the 80's and 90's. 

During the course of his investigation, the Spider also meets "Eric Joss" who is a stand in for Joss Whedon to some extent. The fake names of TV shows is funny and we get Xonic the Barbarian Queen, North by Northwest Park, and The Why Files. (I'll let you guess which shows are referenced there.) Whedon's own Buffy is a major part and is replaced by Tiffany the Werewolf Whacker. The story's villain is a grotesque individual named "Slaughter-House Skeleton". He's a powerful foe and seems to know that Richard Wentworth is The Spider, though that is not really all that well explained. 

The Spider with the help of Nita Van Sloan must rescue a gaggle of folks from an exploding building and later lead the charge to keep the Statue of Liberty from being vandalized. There is also a story about a young mother who has been sexually assaulted and is a heroin addict. All in all, some pretty grim stuff. And truth told all these elements don't hang together as well as they ought to. 

Don McGregor is infamous for being wordy and his talent for verbosity is fully on display in this effort. Sometimes his stylish descriptions add potency to an image, but just as often his word salad plays against the momentum of the story's plot. I cannot really recommend this one, save for Spider completists or fans of Gene Colan's artwork, which is the main reason I bought it. 

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