Spider-Man - Review

The Official Marvel Graphic Novel Collection 1

Any series that only covers the last thirty years can’t really claim to be ‘the best of Marvel’. But this isn’t a bad way to acquire handsomely-bound versions of these stories at reasonable prices.

Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine: Another Fine Mess

This is another of Marvel’s Must Have bargain $5 reprints of the first three issues of what is presumably a hot series. I nearly didn’t bother with it, since I hated the last such collection, also with Wolverine, but this isn’t anywhere near that bad.

FF 1

I buy a lot of things just to review, including lots of first issues. It’s a while since I’ve enjoyed any of them as much as this.

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.

Ultimate Spider-Man 153

Like the first issue of Avengers vs New Ultimates, this has a Death of Spider-Man banner; at least this comic has Spider-Man in it, and I suppose this story actually is the lead-in towards that death. Certainly the threat level is vast enough, since it involves some artefact with wishing powers, with no implied limits on it – maybe that level of danger will in due course drag in the big teams.

Amazing Spider-Man 651

It must be a good 20 years since I last read a Spider-Man comic. So what has happened in the intervening years? It turns out Spider-Man has turned into Batman, more or less.