Giant spiders in the city sound like a conspiracy fantasy, but evidence arrives in the Department of Parks and Recreation. What does this mean for Vin’s and Reynolds’ hunt? Find out in All Eight Eyes A#2 from Dark Horse!

ALL EIGHT EYES #2

Writer: Steve Foxe
Artist: Piotr Kowalski
Colorist: Brad Simpson
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Editor: Daniel Chabon
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: May 24, 2023

Previously in All Eight Eyes: Vin Spencer is kicked out of his New York apartment. With no place to go, he walks through the park where he sees a man hitting something with a hammer – and then he sees a giant spider. Vin, drunk and stoned, later wakes up in a basement. He finds out the man with the hammer is called Reynolds. He and his dog, Possum, have been hunting giant spiders in the city for years. He claims he has tried to tell the authorities, but anyone he tells ends up dead. Now he wants to share his knowledge with Vin. Vin has seen the spiders and believes in them.

DENYING THE EVIDENCE

All Eight Eyes #2 opens at the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation. Two officers, Ernie and Dani, drop a wrapped package Ernie found on Director Godino’s desk. In it is the carcass of a large spider. Dani Dominguez asks if they should report it. Instead, the director demands that Dominguez incinerate it. On their way to the incinerator room, the older Ernie tells Dani that his brother, who did fifteen years in Rikers, told him he had seen a large spider there, but the guards stomped it and would stomp any inmate who talked about them. Dani asks if there is a freezer in the basement.

A month later, Vin talks to his friend Amy in Central Park. He has been homeless, and she asks him straight out if he needs money, or if he is on drugs and needs help. He tries to tell her not only about the spiders, but how there are two cities within the city, and one of them is willfully ignorant of anything happening to the other one. He wants to show her a spider part as proof. Instead, she walks away and tells him to get some help.

Reynolds steps out of the bushes, unsurprised, as though he has lived through this before. He has also caught wind of a monster sighting in an abandoned school. Vin presses him on the stories he has told about a really enormous spider. How can that possibly be true? How could something that large not be seen? Reynolds reminds Vin that the city is full of people who are essentially invisible, such as those who are homeless. People learn to ignore things right before them so they can go about their lives untroubled.

Director Godino spots Dani and orders her to come with him on a walk-through of an old school before the developers get there. She is puzzled; she thought there was a community board meeting about the site. He confides to her that he has political aspirations and is merely keeping some developers informed about a property that may become available soon. If he makes some friends now, they may help him out later.

Everyone descends on the abandoned school. Vin and Reynolds get there first, climb in through a window, and start looking for traces of a spider. Godino and Dominguez are let in by a caretaker. The school is abandoned, run-down, dark, and moldy. Godino kicks a chair over, which Vin and Reynolds hear from where they are on the second floor. They think little of it – people squat in buildings all the time. They poke into the auditorium and pull the stage curtains. There is no spider there. But there is one on the ceiling behind them.

Godino and his people hear the screams. He orders the caretaker to look, but it’s not his job. Then he calls the police. Dani asks the caretaker if they should check it out. He won’t go with her, but he does hand her the flashlight.

HUNTING FOR EVIDENCE

The art of All Eight Eyes #2 fits the story superbly. I like the strong inking details in characters such as the Parks and Recreation folks. Their uniforms look neat but a little rumpled, as though they have had a long day, or at least a long day dealing with the Director. Godino is cranky right from the start. When he singles out Dominguez to go with him to the school, at first, we wonder if she is in trouble. Then he talks about his ambition. No wonder he looks bitter. This is a man who is playing the long game, and we can tell already that he is going to rue the day he saw a spider carcass on his desk.

I love the sequence in the old school. The establishing shot is a view from below, looking up at four floors of broken or boarded up windows. The cloudy skies above it give it the look of a castle in a gothic story. Inside, it is a mix of decay and detritus. While some old desks and chairs and shelves remain, the floor is mostly littered with broken boards and old bricks, things that have fallen apart or been left behind. When Reynolds’ flashlight passes over the colorful remains of a wall mural, the brightness looks incongruous, the last shadow of the school’s former purpose.

BOTTOM LINE: WHERE IS THE REALITY?

Now that we understand the premise, All Eight Eyes #2 begins to set up the conflict between the two men hunting the spiders and Godino, who is exactly the kind of person Reynolds warns about, the kind of person who thoroughly turns a blind eye to the truth. But what will Dominguez bring to the equation?

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All Eight Eyes #2

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Vin falls deeper into Reynolds world of hunting giant spiders in the city.

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