Amazing Spider-Man 654.1

I was bewildered by the Iron Man .1 issue, and this adds to my confusion. These are supposed to be ‘jumping-on points’ for new readers, but like Iron Man 500.1, this makes no attempt to give you any idea that there are interesting things to come for the title. At least in Iron Man you got plenty of sense of where the character is right now, which is something: here, what you get is no Spider-Man at all.

In fact what we have here is the first issue of the new Venom comic, and I don’t understand why it isn’t published as that. Flash Thompson, a corporal who lost his legs in action in the Gulf, has been chosen to host the symbiote that turns people into murderous monsters, so that he can be a secret agent. Why a disabled ex-corporal was chosen for this is not stated – because he’s an old pal of Spider-Man, is all I can come up with, which is a comic writer’s reason, not military intelligence’s.

So Flash goes off on a couple of missions, and succeeds. He only enVenoms once, when in trouble with minor league Cap villain Flag Smasher – as used here, the Venom part is a gimmick he can pull out when he needs it, as in various old heroic adventure TV series. Presumably fighting against its monstrous tendencies will come along in due course.

The main mission is puzzling too – why is the US interested in rescuing a Middle Eastern kidnap victim held in Uzbekistan? There’s a ‘that’ll do’ feel to the plot here, though I suppose there may be more to it than is so far revealed. As it stands, it’s all rather dull, with none of the smartness of say the Alias TV show or Bourne or Bond movies. Slott seems more interested in personal banter, none of which really takes off or amuses. There is a touch of character stuff, including one glimpse of Peter Parker, but that is curtailed by a mission before any meat is reached.

The art is kind of second-rate, without being bad: a bit cutesy, some imagination in the layouts, but these are often misjudged leaving dead spaces and the reader searching for where the relevant bits might be. He’s better when the action starts, making only one minor confusing misstep that made me pause and search in such scenes.

This would make a serviceable Venom #1, though it’s very low on hooks to make me read more of that. What it isn’t is any kind of jumping-on point for Spider-Man, who appears only on the cover and in an ad after the story, said ad being a desperately crowded two pages telling us we should want to buy this title – I am completely mystified as to why the whole comic isn’t trying to act as this, and I am losing interest some in picking up these .1 comics as a way of sampling the series and deciding whether to pursue them, since so far they are not serving that purpose at all. They seem to be designed so as to be as likely to function as jumping-off points.