Customer Reviews

Best of Spider-Man, Vol. 1 (Amazing Spider-Man)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Here, in one loaded volume, are some of the best told stories of any kind, in the last year. Whether these stories were told in comics, film, novels or television, very few matched this level of excellence.
Seriously. The script/screenplay/text and the art/cinematography/visuals I would put up against any type of media this year, or the last.
This represents a great value, as you get quite a few issues in a handsome volume.
The now-famous "issue 36" should be mandatory reading for anyone with at least one eyeball. It could possibly be the single best artistic/creative response to September 11th seen yet. There are images in the story as haunting as any from the site itself.
This is a book you'd be proud to own. And if this happens to be your first dip into modern comics, I envy your upcoming experience.

This book is good, but...some of the stories shouldn't be in it, and others that should be in it aren't. The JMS stories, which are critically acclaimed and heralded by fans are deserving, but it should also include Amazing Spider-Man # 37-39, just to finish out the storyline. The Jenkin's story, (The Big Score), was not the best thing Jenkin's had done, and should be replaced by his Mime silent issue. And the Ultimate DD/Punisher story arc was rather stupid, and should have been replaced by Jenkin's amazing Fusion story arc. However, the Coming Home story is nice, the Kingpin story spectacular, and the Flowers for Rhino story touching. If you'd rather go with the paperback additions, get ASM: Coming Home, PPSM: One small Break, ASM: Revelations, and SM's Tangled Web vol. 1.

Hard to go wrong with JR Jr. A small dose of Spider-Man now again is not too bad. The problem I have with this is the style, it leans towards the MacFarlane end of crazy bendy Spider-Man, as opposed to his work on X-Men. I hated that stuff then, and I still don't like it a lot now, but Romita is good enough to pull it off and not annoy me as much.

The novelty item in this collection is J. Michael Straczynski's embarrassingly bad 9/11 issue 36 of Spider-Man, which is as childishly naive as it is sickeningly earnest. The close-up of a teary-eyed Dr. Doom at the 9/11 site sums up everything that's wrong with the story, which is so cloyingly gag-worthy and outrageously wrong it's almost laughable. The excuses that JMS has Spidey give for why he and other heroes didn't stop the 9/11 attacks sound like howlingly self-serving George W. Bush propaganda: "The sane world will always be vulnerable to madmen, because we cannot go where they go to conceive of such things. We could not see it coming. We could not be here before it happened. We could not stop it." What a load of disingenous, rationalizing hogwash. Bush received a Presidential Daily Briefing memo titled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States" more than a month before the attacks, and had been informed that al Qaeda had been considering ways to hijack American planes. And within the context of the Marvel Universe, it's just plain dumb to expect readers to believe that Osama is somehow more insane, unpredictable and indecipherable than Marvel villains who are foiled with stunning regularity. The JMS story makes no sense on any level whatsoever, and comes off like a ghoulishly cynical wallow.

The best thing about this collection is the Peter Milligan/Duncan Fegredo "Flowers for Rhino" two-parter, which is clever and funny. Greg Rucka's "Severance Package" is also good. What's odd about both, however, is that neither features Spider-Man as the main character (in fact, Spidey is little more than a cameo player in both stories).

The Bill Sienkiewicz art on the final three-parter in this collection is nice, but the crossover Spider/Punisher/Daredevil Bendis script is windy and way too wordy.

I loved the Daredevil/Punisher/Spiderman team-up that is in this collection but other stories are really dull.