I almost gave up on this story early.  The first five pages are the sort of Joe Kelly stories that I don’t like: the flashy dialog that show that certain characters are racist, the franticly shifting story perspectives where we get a page of one scene, a page of other characters, and no time to settle and take in the story.

But once Kelly establishes the background, he paints a really human story about Rhino.  And while most of The Gauntlet stories have been how Spiderman deals with his old enemies, this story is just about one of his old enemies whose life happens to intersect with Spiderman’s.  It’s deft, and overall, surprisingly touching.

Fiumara seems to have a bit of a problem reconciling Rhino’s biology, and Peter Parker looks a bit like Glass Joe from Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, but I think it’s an interesting step from the previous arcs’ retro style and the more modern look that most of the other Marvel comics have been embracing.