"Murderworld: Spider-Man" #1 takes us inside the mind of Arcade. Jim Zub's and Ray Fawkes' story introduces us to Eden Abraha, an MMA fighter. Taking the words on the poster ("No Rules, No Surrender") seriously, Eden goes a little too far in her match against Meeboon. She even puts the Promoter in a hold when he confronts her. As Eden is having a drink at a bar, the bartender is streaming a promotion known as "Murderworld." This "No Rules" fight for survival appeals to her sense of violence. Not surprisingly, the bartender has a business card for "Murderworld."
With one hundred million dollars up for grabs, Eden signs up with a multitude of others from all walks of life. After dealing with explosions, Eden reaches a level that appears to be an ordinary jungle. The only problem is this level is protected by numerous unfriendly neighborhood spider-men and women. To make it worse, they aren't even human.
Black Widow has been trying to track Arcade's gameplay via her laptop to take down his operation. Unfortunately, even though they assisted with narrowing down her search, the X-Men have backed away from going after Arcade. Farid Karami, Chris Sotomayor and Cory Petit were phenomenal in their efforts to graphically distinguish the panels between the levels of competition and the flashback sequence in the octagon.
After Eden becomes close with Alex, a competitor who claims to be a Paramedic, Arcade decides to announce a major twist. There appear to be 64 people left in the game, but only 61 of them are in the competition. The other three are assassins planted among them to take out some of the competition. While this is a one-shot story, it does continue for at least another issue. Not only was this an easy read, but it kept me turning the pages wondering what was waiting around each corner!
