Saturday, September 29, 2012

Spider-Man: Big Time Ultimate Collection

Spider-Man: Big Time Ultimate CollectionSpider-Man: Big Time Ultimate Collection by Dan Slott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Spider-man leads the Avengers into battle against Dr. Octopus and gets a job. A new Hobgoblin rears his ugly head. The Spider-Slayers and the Scorpion return. There's a new Venom in town. Spider-Man's wardrobe expands to include three or four new costumes. Spider-Man joins the Future Foundation in the wake of the Human Torch's death. Spider-Man teaches a class at the Avengers Academy. A lot other stuff happens too...

Confession Time: I haven't read Spider-Man regularly since Mike Wieringo was the artist. In fact, most of my favorite Spider-Man tales are from the original run of Marvel Team-Up. I briefly took an interest in JMS's run on the book but didn't like taste. Plus, Civil War was coming and the revolting amount of hype put me off comics for five years.

However, once I heard Dan Slott was writing Spider-Man, I had to give it a shot. I was not disappointed in the least.

This book contains something like 24 issues of Spider-Man and tells a wide variety of stories featuring the Web-Slinger. The humor and fun level is way up from the last time I read Spider-Man and Slott and the rest of the creative crew did a fantastic job. I particularly liked Marcos Martin's retro-style art, though Humberto Ramos has come a long way since his days on Impulse. Slott really gets what makes Spider-Man work. I caught myself laughing out loud at Spidey's antics quite a few times.

If there's one thing I've learned from Spider-Man: Big Time Ultimate Collection, it's that sometimes making a deal with the devil to save your 150 year old aunt's life at the expense of your marriage sometimes isn't all that bad. This is the best Spider-Man has been in years.

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