Peter Parker: Spider-Man

By: Arnold T. Blumberg
Date: Wednesday, June 20, 2001

I could smell a "cop-out" coming a mile away, and when the other shoe finally dropped, the aroma was pretty rank. Last issue, our hero apparently snapped his neck in a battle with Fusion. Now we've seen Spidey make it through some pretty insane predicaments, from internment under six feet of dirt to alien abductions that hurled him light years away and into the clutches of an evil symbiotic uniform. But wait a minute: his neck is broken? Can they really do this so soon before Spidey's big screen debut? Do we hop over to Reed Richard's lab and have Peter fitted with an adamantium replacement spine? Will Azrael be forced to take over the Spider-mantle while Alfred feeds our favorite wall-crawler some chicken soup? Or have I stumbled into the wrong title?

As this issue makes painfully clear, none of this is any real concern, since surprise! the entire neck-snapping business turns out to be just a cleverly crafted illusion (shame the same couldn't be said for Gwen). Everyone in Spidey comics remembers the definitive sequence when Lee and Ditko milked Peter hoisting a huge wreck of steel over his shoulders for pages and pages, ratcheting up the tension and pathos until his heroism was oozing from the panels. That was classic Spidey hell, it was classic superhero storytelling, period. And there have been too many occasions when some new guy comes along and tries to recapture that moment, but it just doesn't work.

This is perhaps one of the most nauseating attempts at re-creating the "Spider-Man Hero Moment," with page after page of Peter agonizing over his supposedly broken neck and his trademark determination to go down swinging. Since the situation is so implausible even by superhero standards that it scarcely bears thinking about, Peter's dilemma seems hollow and uninteresting. When we finally learn the truth, it's anti-climactic in the extreme. A poor man's Mysterio, Fusion has merely tampered with Spidey's perception. Then, when Plan A fails, he decides to torment the webbed one with illusions of other foes and allies. This is always a sign that the writer has run out of ideas. "Hey, let's see Spidey throwing a punch at the Thing and the Hulk, that's always solid entertainment!"

So, as if the protracted exploration of Spider-Man's already established endurance isn't enough, we have yet another occasion when a Marvel comic is filled to the brim with scenes of a hero engaged in battle with phantom versions of various heroes and villains. This evidently gives the artists a chance to show how great they are at drawing Doctor Doom and Thor. Do these guys need to pad their portfolios or what? Go read Straczynski and Romita Jr.'sAMAZING SPIDER-MAN instead.

PETER PARKER: SPIDER-MAN

Grade: C-

Issue: No. 32 (130)

Author(s): Paul Jenkins, Mark Buckingham, Wayne Faucher

Publisher: Marvel Comics

Price: $2.25