The Web was a bit of a rarity in the Impact Comics line as an ensemble book (Black Hood had a revolving cast, in a sense, which we'll get to when Sunday Splash Page gets there.) Where the other books revolved around solo heroes, "The Web" was an entire government organization. It had existed since the late '60s, with a broad mandate to investigate the unusual, but seemingly really created to investigate the disappearance of that generation's superheroes, the American Crusaders. Without success.
There were multiple agents, with different areas of operation, varying levels of public visibility, and different approaches. They eventually got powered armor, although the power was transmitted from some central station, and required authorization to use, even before Web fell on hard times as the years passed and budgets shrank. Eventually they were roaming swamps in business suits, chasing reports of UFOs.
With the emergence of new superheroes they're back in business. More money (but also more oversight), and more staff. That's where Strazewski makes his mistake, the cast is simply too large. From top-down, you've got Powell Jennings, who is some dipshit prep-school goober appointed as head of the agency. Of the field staff that are holdovers from the earlier years, there's Bill O'Grady, in charge on-site (that's him in the flak jacket), "Big Daddy" Rothco (the bearded guy), the Sunshine Kid (a spiritualist/hippie type), St. James who gets brought in to run tactics, "Jump" Kennedy, a pilot whose girlfriend was abducted by aliens a decade ago, and Gunny Beaupre. There's another guy, who calls himself "Troy" but is referred to by others as "Brew", who shows up in another issue.
Among the new generation, there's "Win" Winfield, whose older brother is part of the same prep-school dipshits as Jennings, Rad Stiles, the aggressive dickhead of the cast, Buster Thomas, the scientist who devised the updated version of the armor, where the power boost circuitry is actually wired under their skin, and Saleh/Silver, a former DEA agent and St. James' estranged daughter. Plus, the three kids up there (from left to right, Jamal, Alyce and Kevin, although Jamal is sometimes white and sometimes black, depending on the issue), who found an old Web base when Big Daddy used it after stopping a theft in the first issue.
That's too many characters! Especially when we're told, in issue #2, only one of them was intended to be the actual "Web" that was out in the field, in public. Double-especially when they're crossing over with the other titles, or devoting pages to guest-stars. Buster teams up with The Fly in issue 5, the (3rd) Shield guest-stars in issue 12, and The Fly, the Comet, and a third hero get suckered into attacking Web in issue 9. Plus, the last two issues are written by Paul Kupperberg, listed as "guest writer," so he brought in yet another old agent (up to then unmentioned) for his own story.
As a result, the book feels overstuffed and directionless. Plots or character arcs make little progress. Some characters get basically nothing. Issue 8 implies Winfield's desperate to prove himself after being compared unfavorably to his brother all these years. That doesn't jibe with his behavior up to then, where he seemed content to stand back and let others lead. Nothing's ever done with the tension between Silver and her father, beyond the initial argument that shows it exists. "Jump" has one run-in with a UFO, this time with working armor, but it ends inconclusively and he doesn't tell anyone about it or try to get any help. I couldn't tell you a thing about Rad or Gunny. Not likes, dislikes, motivations. Nothing.
The kids - who insist on being called "the Posse" - get one back-up story where Big Daddy tries to teach them how to drive some vehicles. While they don't crash, they're reckless enough he yells at them to stop after two pages. Also, O'Grady talks about maybe using them for undercover or intelligence gathering, but putting them in bright yellow armor on loud vehicles, while likely to increase their life expectancy (at least the armor part) doesn't seem great for that purpose. At least the kids negotiated themselves $25/month in pay, which is $25 more than they were initially being offered.
Generally, the focus is on O'Grady, Sunshine, Big Daddy, and Buster. O'Grady struggling with an administrative role and chomping at the bit to do fieldwork instead. He never really sorts that out, never gets better at handling Jennings' particularly irritating brand of making unreasonable demands, then blaming O'Grady when they backfire. Sunshine spends a lot of time making remarks that are supposed to be sage or clever and pretending to kind of be above the fray, but it's Kupperberg who comes closest to addressing the flaws in that, as the laidback attitude lets a former agent who built his rep on a lie get put in charge of peoples' lives. There could have been something for Big Daddy, training the kids, but again, that got almost no page time. Thomas is a scientist by trade, who submitted to the procedure she developed after early attempts went badly. She isn't supposed to feel very confident using the armor, but that only crops up intermittently.
Maybe the plan was always for the "1 agent" bit to get thrown out by circumstances, but that could have been something to make better use of such a bloated cast. Have a real sense the characters are competing with each other to be that "1 agent", and the negative impact that has. Maybe Buster shifts towards tech support, coming up with new gadgets for the armor, or Sunshine sticks strictly with training. Some characters wash out, or maybe "Jump" vanishes pursuing his vendetta against the aliens.
Tom Artis draws the first six issues, then guest pencilers for three issues, then Hoang Nguyen for three issues, and Barry Horne draws Kupperberg's two-parter. I'm not sure Artis' art was suited to such a crowded book. His art looks alright in the larger panels, but once he has to cram more characters in, or the panel space shrinks, things get messy and disorganized. His art always looks very busy to me, a lot of small lines and hatch marks on faces and clothes, though I guess that could be Wray's inks. With room to operate, like a full-page splash, it's fine. In the 5th panel of a 6-panel page, with 4 characters involved, not so much. The coloring also overwhelms the linework at times, rendering characters indistinct blobs.
Nguyen fares better, at least once Mike DeCarlo starts inking in issue 11. The previous issue, the linework alternates between almost disappearing and giving characters oddly exaggerated mouths. DeCarlo seems to use a thinner line, but it's a stronger one. The characters are solid, distinct. The action is clear and easy to follow. Just in general, it's less busy-looking, but it's also an issue that focuses heavily on just Silver and how she ended up with Web, so there's not as many people in mass-produced armor running around at one time.
The book's also plagued by miscommunication between writer and art team. Panels that don't show what the dialogue implies is there. In several of those cases, it's like there's a one-panel delay between dialogue and art, the latter running behind the former. It's worst in the guest penciler issues from 7 through 9, so maybe it was a time crunch thing. There's a page of a fight in issue 8, a 9-panel grid, that's a complete mess of dialogue that doesn't seem to match the action. There's no flow to anything, to the point I'm not sure if you're supposed to read down the columns or across the rows, because it doesn't really work either way.
Taken as a whole, it's by far the weakest of the core six titles.
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