| Comic Review | Paul Milligan |
Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman #1
Writer: Peter David
Pencils: Mike Wieringo
Inker: Karl Kesel
Colors: Paul Mounts
The
debut issue of a brand new Spiderman series kicks off the
big Spiderman event The Other: Evolve or Die. Peter
finds himself worrying more and more about death and losing
everything. The point is hammered home as he faces off
against a new villain named Tracer who manages to beat
Spidey not once, but twice. Meanwhile, Spidey gets some
potentially bad news from his doctor.
I like Spiderman, I really do. When he’s handled right he’s
one of my favorite characters. Lately I haven’t been digging
on the other two Spidey titles (Amazing and Marvel
Knights) so when I heard about this new book from Peter
David and Mike Wieringo I was pretty excited. David is a
great writer and has done some really good Spiderman comics
in the past and ‘Ringo, who has also worked on Spiderman
before, is a brilliant artist. So what could possibly go
wrong? I’ll tell you.
Instead of debuting the book and letting it set itself apart
from the crowd, Marvel has lumped Friendly Neighborhood
Spiderman into a massive 12-part “this character will
never be the same!” storyline. Not only that but the story
has been divided up between the three Spiderman writers so
that a different writer will handle all three titles each
month until the conclusion of the story. That means that
Peter David won’t even be writing the second and third issue
of his own new series. I wanted to read Friendly
Neighborhood Spiderman because I didn’t want to read the
other two Spiderman titles. Now, if you want to follow what
the heck is going on you’re basically forced to read the
other two titles. No thanks. I’m not sure how other people
feel about this situation but in handling things this way
Marvel has basically lost me as a reader before the first
issue of a new series has even officially debuted.
Now, all that aside and ignoring all The Other: Evolve or
Die stuff, this book is actually pretty good. David does
indeed write a great Spiderman and this is easily some of
the best work of Wieringo’s career. It’s really a shame that
such a promising new Spiderman title had to be lumped in
with yet another massive crossover I couldn’t care less
about. Oh well, maybe I’ll come back when the dust has
settled and the book can truly stand on its own.
Special thanks go out to Jeremy Shorr, owner of
Titan Comics for allowing us to use his advance
preview books for review purposes.
