I know what you’re asking yourselves right about now. Who
could hate Spidey? Isn’t he the lovable Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man? Even
J.J.J. likes Spidey these days. OK, yeah, Spidey still does have a rogue’s
gallery of villains who, in all probability, still aren’t so fond of him, but
among the general populace, who could hate our wall-crawling hero? Well, just the other day I came home from the comic shop,
and I brought with me, a handful, a handful-and-a-half of short-run Spider-Man
titles, including Spider-Man & Wolverine #1, Predator
Versus Spider-Man #1 & 2, and Godzilla vs Spider-Man #1, in this
batch I also brought home Captain America # 14 & 15,and I
must say, that these books paint a very interesting picture of who the House of
Ideas believe my old pal Spidey to be.
So, let’s just sort this out, shall we? While teaming Spidey
and Wolverine has become a pretty standard pairing by now, getting teamed up
with a guy with adamantium claws and a penchant for high-octane fights could be
considered dangerous, even for someone with a early-warning danger sense. And
then, as if that pairing wasn’t off-putting enough, Spidey then has to face off
against both a Predator—an interstellar neigh unstoppable killing machine, and
Godzilla—the monstrous, radioactive, fire-breathing, king of the Kajus.
Now while I’m totally “Team Spidey” I’m not entirely sure
that these parings are exactly within his weight class, if you know what I
mean.
And then, as if this wasn’t enough Spidey is then teamed up
with Captain America (Steve Rogers) and Thor to learn what happened to the city
of Broxton, Ohio, after the appearance of Asgard landed on Earth and the city
disappeared (courtesy of the god of hammers no less)
Now, while all of this seems to be way over the top of
team-ups for the Web-Head, let us look at the individual stories.
First up, Logan is contacted by an old SHIELD agent about a
missing directory a master database of all the world’s double agents and
recruited him to recover it. So, he then conscripts Peter Parker to help him
locate it, resulting in them running afoul of Omega Red and Kraven the Hunter
who also want the directory. During the fight they discover that Mysterio is
involved and somehow seem to wind up in some sort of mind swap twist of their
past that somehow seems to involve Peter’s former spy parents.
In the Predator issues, it is a wicked hot several day in in
NYC where An ancient Predator who has been stalking the planet for some 100
years but only of supremely hot days becomes active once again and is now
trolling through the subways of the Big Apple during a city-wide blackout that
has Mary Jane trapped underground in the subway system being chased by the Predator
while Spider-Man is racing to catch up and rescue her.
Next we have Spidey facing off against Godzilla in a
throwback, continuity retcon implant occurring just after Spidey returns from
the (first) Secret Wars and wearing the black Symbiote Spidey suit. We do have
to say that we really did enjoy this story most of all, due mostly to the
off-handed flippant way writer Joe Kelly penned the story, full of throwback
anarchism and references to random Spidey events that took place during that
time frame. Nice going, Joe!
Finally, we are treated to Peter wanting to call up Steve
Rogers just to chat, and Steve having a heart-to-heart with a woman who is a
neighbor about how tough it is for a superhero like him to have “just friends”
with others due to the uniqueness of their situation. (Is the other person a
normal, or also a hero, and if a hero does that other person know that Steve is
a hero.) Then having Steve call Pete, only to be be himself to be called upon
by Thor and to ask if Pete wants to join in as Spider-Man. Which Pete totally
does, resulting in a couple of very cute moments between Spidey and Cap.
All-in-all we really did enjoy all of the books (mostly
because they involved Spidey, and partially because each was well-written and thus,
we are interested in seeing how each turn out. (Here it should be noted that
the Godzilla storyline appears to be written across several titles as the giant
Kaju is appearing in several other Marvel titles which we believe are all
somehow tied together forming a much larger story.
We understand that adding Spider-Man (Wolverine, Predator,
or Gojira (ゴジラ) to a storyline can add
readers(cash) to a title, so yeah, while these types of stories can often
simply pretzel-logic the storylines or characterizations of various the various
characters involved, but we can (and often have) simply dismiss all of our objections
because the story is so good. Your milage may differ.
