The Life & Death of Spiders

Through reading these and other recent Spider-Man books (25 issues worth) one thing comes to mind: even through bad stories, Spider-Man is still the man. It may be controversial but I like the idea of Ezekiel, Morlun, the Spider totem, all of it. Spider-Man has to be changed up every once in awhile and this is a much better way to do it then killing people off, or a new costume. As Straczynski's run goes on he shows a new side to Spider-Man/Peter Parker, MJ, Aunt May, even Uncle Ben. Spider-Man is firmly in the Marvel Universe in this series, with random comings and goings from other heroes. On the other hand, Peter Parker is firmly in the real world during this run. Peter Parker in college has been tried before, but Peter Parker (as an adult of course) in high school? Well, that's different and incredibly entertaining. The new villains are memorable and the older cast reminds you why you loved them to begin with.

"Amazing Spider-Man: Unintended Consequences" is the fifth trade paperback volume representing the work of writer J. Michael Straczynski and artist John Romita, Jr. that has revitalized America's favorite web-spinner. Collected here are issues #51-58 of "The Amazing Spider-Man," which starts in the aftermath of Mary Jane's decision to return home with Peter.The first four issues deal with a new character, called Digger. In 1957 there was a gangland hit in Las Vegas, and now, after a Gamma bomb test near where the bodies were buried, a mutated creature crawls out of its grave and head to New York City to find the mobster to find Forellli, the mobster who ordered the hit. Meanwhile, Peter and Mary Jane are having fun out on the town reconciling, until the creature starts ripping a nightclub apart. The next thing we know our hero is getting weird clues from Lt. Lamont, having chats with mobsters, taking a trip to Las Vegas, and, most surprisingly, being hired by Forelli to protect his daughter.The rest of this volume consists of a pair of two-part stories. "Unintended Consequences," co-plotted and scripted by Fionna Avery, is the best story in the volume. Peter Parker takes an interest in Melissa Coolidge, a student on crutches with a sharp wit, a pretty strong vocabulary, and an attitude problem. Peter gets her into his Honors Biology course and escorts her home. After an encounter with some local thugs working for the building's landlord, he meets Melissa's mom and learns that from Melissa that her older brother Jack in is jail because that vigilante creep Spider-Man nabbed him for stealing a car. After sending the landlord a message, Spider-Man talks to Ezekiel and the doctrine of unintended consequences and the fact that even bad guys have families."Happy Birthday" sets up the big 500th issue of "Spider-Man" (if you put Volume 1 and Volume 2 together). Things start going bad when Peter discovers that instead of "Poetry and Science" the school got copies of "Essentials of Cooking With Fowl, Pig and Cow" for his biology students. That night there is red lightning, which Spider-Man goes to investigate. What he finds is every superhero in the city fighting the Mindless Ones, which are invading from the Faltine Dimension. Spider-Man joins the fight. Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four has a solution but Dr. Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts, arrives to tell the heroes they have been tricked into bringing back the dread Dormammu. However, be forewarned that we do not get to the big payoff for this one (drawn by John Romita, Sr.) by the end of this one. I got back into Spider-Man because I wanted to use "The Essential Spider-Man, Volume 1" is my Popular Culture class. The idea is that students read those first twenty issues of "Spider-Man" and come up with the defining elements of the comics, which they then apply to a current issue of the web-spinner. That meant I had to get current with what was happening in the various titles, and seeing

I've been following Straczynski's run on "Amazing Spider-Man" ever since the first book caught my eye in the graphic novels rack. This is his fourth volume, and he shows no sign of slowing down. Quick summary: Peter and his wife have just reunited, but -- as these things tend to happen in their world -- a reincarnated gangster shows up in New York, bent on getting revenge on the now-elderly Mafia boss who killed him fifty years before. On again, Straczynski shows himself to be one of the most capable writers in comics -- great dialogue, great plots, and his character work is something you have to see to believe. I've never seen anyone get inside Spidey's head like he does; in only five issues, he makes the new villian, Digger, one of the most sympathetic characters I've seen in comics at the same time (just take his reaction as he catches up to the fifty years of history he's missed...). An excellent job -- I can't recommend this book highly enough.