Marvel Age Spider-Man - Volume 3: Swingtime

"Marvel Age Spider-Man" takes a decidedly different approach from all the other Spider-Man comic books out there. After the success of the two "Spider-Man" theatrical films, both of which are in the Top 10 in terms of all-time box office receipts (non-adjusted for inflation, as any good "Gone With the Wind" fan can tell you), Marvel has been riding the wave by putting out several new Spider-Man titles. Each issue of "Marvel Age Spider-Man" is based on the original stories that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko did in back in the early 1960s for "The Amazing Spider-Man", completely rewritten by Daniel Quantz and Todd Dezago, and redrawn by Jonboy Meyers. "Volume 2: Everyday Hero" brings together issues 5-8 of "Marvel Age Spider-Man," which updates issues 6-9 of "The Amazing Spider-Man" (Marvel made the wise decision to just skip over the storyline of "Spider-Man" #1 where our hero uses his webbing to hitch a ride on a space capsule and started "Marvel Age Spider-Man" with "Spider-Man" #2 and his first fight with the Vulture). The assumption is that everybody knows the story of Spider-Man's original, from the first movie if not from anything else. In the four issues collected here Spider-Man fights the Lizard, has a second encounter with the Vulture, has to deal with both the Living Brain and Flash Thompson (plus a brief encounter with the Human Torch), and then clashes with Electro. These stories will be familiar to those of us who remember the original "Spider-Man" stories, but they work just as well with neophytes once they understand that the first time around Mary Jane Watson was not around from the very beginning. Peter Parker is not as much of bookworm as he was before and Spider-Man is pretty much cocky right from the start (as Doc Ock notes at one point, but that will not be until Volume 3). It will be interesting to see how far Marvel goes with this particular comic book title: Will they continue past the point when Ditko was drawing the book? Will they adapt an annual so that issue #100 of "Marvel Age Spider-Man" will redo issue #100 of "The Amazing Spider-Man," when Spider-Man ends up with six arms? Stay tuned, boys and girls. I still think there is a place for "Marvel Age Spider-Man" in the Marvel universe, since it takes us back to the beginning when Peter Parker was still in high school without all the changes and complications we have in "Ultimate Spider-Man," although that retelling of the tale is even more interesting. By retelling and redrawing the Lee and Ditko stories we get to enjoy what us old timers still think of as getting back to the basics of Spider-Man, when our hero was always worried about Aunt May, dealing with daily doses of grief from Flash Thompson and J. Jonah Jameson, not to mention whatever super villain is trying to pound him into the ground, and trying to make a go of his relationship with Betty Brant. Hopefully readers unfamiliar with the original Spider-Man will be inspired to go back and check out