Spider-view: Spider-Man/Punisher/Sabretooth: Designer Genes
A mediocre graphic novel with a trite premise serves up some entertaining concepts and a decent twist
—by Nathan on July 25, 2025—
Let's acknowledge the pun immediately.
Traditionally (and speaking as someone who's only knowledge of fashion comes from a bit of Googling), "designer jeans" are jeans crafted from higher-end materials, created for style rather than practicality. And, from the little I read, they wear the name of the designer or brand proudly, associating their quality with an individual or company.
Maybe that's what the Roxxon Corporation is hoping for with their latest scheme: to be associated with some higher-end lifeforms. In this instance, their "designer genes" are made from some of the highest-end material you can find–DNA! Find out how to mix a bit of human with a bit of animal here and–presto!–you've unlocked all kinds of combinations.
Big problem, however: if you follow certain lines of theological thinking, you already believe a creative hand has melded DNA together the way it's supposed to go. Thus, tampering is a big no-no. More like "redesigner genes" at that point, right? Hand-me-downs. And who wants a hand-me-down human?
And that's not even scratching the surface on all the other ethical, legal issues that come with such a premise.
A couple fellas seem a little teed-off with Roxxon's biological jigsaw puzzle recreations as we dig into this particular graphic novel. One of 'em's a regular dude–no animal combinations here. The other two have had their cells tampered with in the past, so buddy, they can tell you the trouble this kind of God-play can cause.
Spider-Man/Punisher/Sabretooth: Designer Genes
Writer: Terry Kavanagh
Penciler: Scott McDaniel
Inker: Keith Williams
Colorist: Tom Smith
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Issue: Spider-Man/Punisher/Sabretooth: Designer Genes graphic novel
Publication Date: June 1993
Terry Kavanagh, one of the architects behind "Maximum Carnage", took a break, I guess, from writing one narrative about Spidey dealing with violent vigilantes and a villain who likes to shred people so he could write a graphic novel where Spidey deals with a violent vigilante and a villain who likes to shred people. I could throw my hands up and say "Because it's the 90s!" but I feel I could say that about every Spidey comic I write about from here through the end of the "Clone Saga," at least, so I will spare us all the sarcasm.
I am not familiar with Kavangh's oeuvre the same way I'm familiar with, for example, David Michelinie's or J.M. DeMatteis'. When I open a comic by DeMatteis, say, I feel a sense of purpose, that because I like other narratives of his I have read, that I will find something strong to appreciate about the current narrative. I've really only ever read a few back-up strips in a couple annuals that Kavanagh wrote, some work he did on a Cloak and Dagger series, and his "Maximum Carnage" contributions. Among those "Maximum Carnage" writers, I'd say he produced better material than Michelinie and Tom DeFalco but wasn't as good as DeMatteis. So second place isn't all that bad, right?
Well, in this graphic novel, Kavanagh exchanges that "silver medal" for "silver metal," because we got bullets flying everywhere thanks to one-third of this narrative's title. As I joked, we are in the 90s, but in all seriousness, picking up a graphic novel guest-starring the Punisher is no surprise at all…if anything, I'm a little astonished Sabretooth got the billing over Wolverine in this adventure!
Sabretooth is, ultimately, a better fit for this story, in terms of character motivation. With his three central characters, Kavanagh at least nails their intentions, and I say "at least" because I don't plan on being too generous with praise. Each of our "protagonists" are drawn in to stop shifty dealings by Roxxon that involve animal experimentation. I almost said "coincidentally drawn in," but I hesitated, because there are some parallels and intentional connections between our characters' missions. Spidey's tracking down a monster that killed lab animals, Punisher's hunting a monster that killed homeless people, and Sabretooth is a monster hunting people who act like animals and killed animals, but they're not homeless…the people not the animals…aw, never mind.
Point is, each man has a motive which draws them together into a conflict with Roxxon, and despite how thin the themes are in this graphic novel, I have to give Kavanagh credit for giving our three main characters genuine, logical reasons to interact. They each forge their own path, for their own reasons, to the same location, which brings them face-to-face. It feels less ridiculous than other comics I've read where heroes happen to bump into each other or Spidey just so happens to be swinging by when a supervillain commits a crime. There's thought injected into this aspect of the plot. You absolutely know, from page one, that our characters will interact, but the road to reaching that interaction is solidly laid.
The rest of the graphic novel…not so much.
The biggest problem is that, despite developing a fairly solid foundation (though I might point out one crack later), Kavanagh jumps into the hum-drum land of cliches once our "protagonists" meet. The Spidey/Punisher side of things goes exactly the same way you've seen it before–the Punisher tries to kill Sabretooth, Spidey keeps him from killing Sabretooth, and while they're duking it out, Sabretooth tries killing them both. And then they kinda all team up to go after the actual bad guys. Nothing you haven't seen before in this kind of narrative.
There is the indication that Sabretooth is playing the role of an anti-hero instead of a straightforward villain, despite our other heroes learning of an animal/human-killing monster and labeling the first dude they see with sharp teeth, long claws, and a history of murderous violence as their culprit. It is some clever wool-pulling by Kavanagh to lead readers astray before doing some rug-pulling late in the game with a big third act twist. But otherwise, everyone is true to form in this graphic novel–Spidey swings, Punisher punishes, and Sabretooth snarls and slashes with his claws like his extinct namesake.
That aforementioned twist ends up being fairly clever, providing some much-needed context for our paperthin villains, two brothers working for Roxxon. Kavanagh seeds enough clues regarding our mystery murderer with a possible link to the villains that when the curtain is pulled back (or, specifically, a metal door is unlocked), you can see the groundwork Kavanagh laid for the moment. Unlike effectively utilizing our "protagonists" after drawing them together, he does what he can to make the twist work, and though it's nowhere near the brilliance of "Bucky is the Winter Soldier" or "I did it thirty-five minutes ago," the bit works.
It does mean that a lot of this comic feels like it's building to this point, and upon a second read, I sensed Kavanagh cared more for the endgame than individual scenes getting us to the conclusion. The pacing doesn't feel terribly rushed, but momentum is ever forward, tension building until the late turn. It means a lot of the comic is built upon action sequence here, fight scene there, not slowing down until the big reveal. And in earlier scenes, there is a sense Kavanagh hopes to establish the plot quickly to move us ahead–our introductory sequence to Peter Parker makes little sense logistically, as the graduate is working in one part of a lab only to find slaughtered lab animals in another part, somehow completely missing the carnage as it happened, despite the fact the killer bolted mere minutes ago. The scene is strangely structured in terms of indicating environment, causing confusion as to the sequence of events.
I'd like to blame Scott McDaniel for some of the confusion–I think he just dropped the ball in logically moving Peter from place to place–but otherwise, I find no issues with his art. Like with Kavanagh, I'm not terribly familiar with McDaniel's bibliography–I recognized the name when starting the graphic novel, faintly recalling some issues of his Nightwing work I read back in high school (and, just to note, I read those in collected editions, so not as long ago as you may think). His is decent work, providing an edge to characters like Punisher and Sabretooth without going over-the-top. His faces are, at times, a little overdrawn, feeling somewhat out of place in a graphic novel with art that generally straddles a line I like to call "realistic enough." I think I like the Nightwing work better by comparison, but I will note that could be the benefit of a few extra years of experience for McDaniel and different folks handling coloring and inking.
On the plus side, McDaniel gets to draw a few panels of a (and I'm not making this up) "Canadian arsonist squad," and that's a quote from the graphic novel. Called "the Scorchers," they start torching a place where some homeless folks have planted themselves, and the Punisher stops them in two-and-a-half pages. It's my favorite bit in the graphic novel, simply because it forced me to ask the question "Why specify that these arsonists are Canadian?" They've never appeared in a comic since, and they don't factor into the rest of the story, so I feel this has to be some kind of joke by Kavanagh. Except neither he nor McDaniel are Canadian, so…maybe they're hockey professional rejects who hate ice so much they started burning things? I have no idea. It's random, it's goofy, and the random goofiness of it got a chuckle out of me.
"Better than 'Maximum Carnage'" is the label I can slap on this graphic novel, which is faint praise that doesn't say a whole lot either. But it is. The story is silly, the character interactions are cliche, and some questionable artistic elements don't quite lend it the flow it needs. But the inciting incidents which draw our characters together work decently well, a late plot twist feels believable enough, and if nothing else, we're treated to the debut of what I think may be the only Canadian arsonist squad in all of Marvel's history. Unless someone tells Deadpool and Wolverine were once paid to burn buildings. Then I'll be sad.