Adam Graham's Blog: Christians and Superheroes - Posts Tagged "1999"

Spider-Man: The Next Chapter Vol. 1 by Howard Mackie

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This collects six months of Spidey Comics from 1999, with the first of many reboots back to Issue 1 for Amazing Spider-man and Peter Parker Spider-man. It also features a crossover with Thor. The book opens with Peter having given up being Spider-man but someone else having taken up the mantle who he doesn't know who they are.

As a book, it's solid throughout. The stories are all engaging. There are some good guest villains, some nice plot ideas, and nothing really outstays its welcome or gets too stupid in this book. This is a controversial run, but it definitely starts out on the right foot.

The run's greatest liabilities do appear. If the book has a repeated theme, its trying to undo bits of Spider-man history and returning the character and New York City as a whole to previous status quo rather than moving forward. Thus we see the Sandman's return to villainy after many years as a hero, and we begin to see an effort to re-instate the Kingpin. There's also very little understanding of how to write Mary Jane as an actual human being, so she shows up for a few cheesecake panels and jets off on modeling jobs and remains the enforcer who constantly is there to reminds Peter he's no longer to Spider-man.

Again, these issues don't hurt the quality of this book, but they will pose problems for the rest of this run.



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