I've long been in the favour of more stylized or cartoon-y looking comic books vs photo-realism art work. It's not a brand new release, but I just read the Spider-Woman: Agent of SWORD collection, and I was greatly reminded of this. At first glance, Alex Maleev's artwork is very pretty. The more I look at it though, the more I think it looks lifeless, posed and traced. I find that the characters seem like they are cut and paste in front of photographic cityscape backgrounds or plunked into locations like a sticker into a colouring book page location. I find it all very distracting as I read through the story.

Since this Spider-Woman work is accomplished with directing models into poses and many of the backgrounds are digital references, it might have a sense of realism, but it lacks life and soul. I guess I'm a traditionalist. I like a comic book that looks like a comic book and not stills from a live action movie. Also, I kinda just noticed how blatantly offensive the triangles on her costume are.