Annuals are interesting creatures. They can either be amazing or complete failures. They have the distinction of not being part of the main series and they can either choose to embrace that aspect or do their best to tie-in. I personally prefer the latter, if they are going to adopt the name of the main series, make yourself relevant by giving us some content that has meaning to the main series. This, btw, is one of those amazing annuals.
We are given two stories in this annual. The main story is about Ben Urich and his relationship with the recent Hobgoblin, his nephew Phil Urich. It becomes apparent that Phil still cares about his uncle, and Ben misinterprets this as Phil being essentially a good person who, if given the chance, would turn everything around. It is a great bit of storytelling to see that hope Ben has completely dissolved, realizing that Phil enjoys what he is doing and that his care for Ben is not necessarily due to altruism.
The second story herein is about Carlie Cooper and Watanabe, and Sajani's attempting to cure Carlie of the Goblin serum and Watanabe realizing Monster is Carlie and that her tracking algorithm in her lenses are compromised. This story is less deep than the first story, but it serves a vital purpose - giving readers a glimpse at some secondary characters in this play, freeing up Otto for the main event next issue. Great characterizations here by Christos Gage, who does some amazing one-off pick-up work like annuals. The art is very enjoyable as well we get some Javier Rodriguez channeling Marcos Martin in the first story and Philippe Brione doing some decent superhero-standard in the second story. All-in-all some great side stories, just what an annual should do.
RATING: A
