Peter Parker, Spider-Man: Back in Black

Collects Sensational Spider-Man #35-40 and Annual #1, Spider-Man Family #1-2, Marvel Spotlight: Spider-Man and Spider-Man Black in Black Handbook.

Most of this book is written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and drawn by various artists, most notably Angel Medina, Clayton Crain, Lee Weeks and Salvador Larroca.

This is the second half of the Back in Black event, the first of which you can read about here. Just like the first book, this is a mixed bag of loosely connected stories which share a common theme, dark Spidey, more than they share an actual storyline.

In the first story, written by Aguirre-Sacasa with art by Medina and Ramon Bachs, Spider-Man impostors with similar powers begin popping up on the streets, but it turns out that their bodies start deteriorating after a while, so of course the original Spider-Man goes to investigate. In the end it turns out that Mr. Hyde is behind it all for reasons I never really understood. Aguirre-Sacasa usually writes dark stories with hints of horror in them, and I have to admit that I really don't think that Spider-Man and horror stories match up too well. Maybe he wants to do something like McFarlane's run from the beginning of the 90's, but hey, this ain't the 90's no more!

Although Medina only did one issue in this book I have to comment on how badly he draws. He draws really badly, ugh! Why he keeps showing up as artist on the Spider-Man titles I don't know, can't they get rid of him? He's a copy of an artist that was interesting 15 (fifteen!) years ago. Spider-Man looks all wriggly when drawn by Medina, and the characters look just awful. Yet Marvel considers him a hotshot artist and therefore had him draw the covers to both Back in Black books. Wtf!!! What did Spidey do to deserve this!?!

The other artist on the first story, Ramon Bachs, has a much more down to earth style of drawing, and I think he could be really good on hard boiled crime books or books like Vertigo's Hellblazer, but unfortunately his way of drawing seems to be a little out of place in a Spider-Man book. He's still a hell of a lot better than Medina though...

Where the first story is rather uninteresting, the second story, also written by Aguirre-Sacasa with art by art by Lee Weeks and Rick Hoberg, shines as one of the best Spider-Man stories I've read in recent times. This story is really about Eddie Brock who is dying from cancer and who is beginning to display symptoms of schizophrenia. Brock has gotten rid of Venom, but Venom still lingers in his mind, and it is the graphical depiction of this mental illness that really makes me like this story. Not only is the art great, it also lifts the story, which is actually pretty good as it is, to a higher level. If you buy this book, I recommend skipping the first story and going straight to this one!

The book contains four more short stories writen by Aguirre-Sacasa, Matt Fraction and Sean McKeever and drawn by different artists, among them Clayton Crain and Salvador Larroca. They're drawn in very different styles, but they are all very well drawn in their own way. Each story is self-contained, so they give the book the feel of an annual more than a regular issue. The Spider-Man Family stories are pretty dark in tone, which surprised me, because I thought that was supposed to be a kiddies mag, but maybe that was just from seeing the cover of the first issue.

This book also contains Marvel Spotlight: Spider-Man and Spider-Man: Back in Black Handbook. The Spotlight issue features some pretty interesting interviews and the handbook has a bunch of profiles, very few of which are even remotely connected to Back in Black, but I will commend Marvel for including stuff like this in the trades. Please continue to do this!

All in all this book is a tad better than the first Back in Black, but the first story really drags the overall impression down. Also, the stories are not really connected, so as a Spider-Man event Back in Black is disappointing. The book does give a good impression of the diversity of stories and styles of expression that suits the Spider-Man character, although in general the stories are rather dark, as this seems to be the theme of Back in Black. If you're looking for a bunch of short disconnected Spidey-stories to read on rainy summer nights, this is the book for you, but this doesn't really seem to be what todays comic book readers crave, now does it?

5/10

Spider-Man: Back in Black

Collects Amazing Spider-Man #539-543 and Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #17-23 and Annual #1.

Ok, let me start out by saying that Spider-Man is my all time favorite super hero, and a mere cameo of Spidey will bump the quality of any comic book up a notch or two for me. That said, I don't like creative teams on the Spidey-books fucking things up (you know, "With great power, comes great responsibility" etc.), so I can be critical of them as well. You send the X-Men to alternate universes, strip them of their powers and do whatever you want, but don't mess with my Spider-Man! Ok, enough with the warnings.

Spider-Man: Back in Black takes over where Civil War left Spider-Man; that is, on the run from the law and with aunt May bleeding from a gun shot wound on the door step of a rental bungalow. So, a little worse than usual...

The idea of 'Back in Black' (besides the obvious one of coinciding with Spider-Man 3), was to put Spidey in a situation that would strain him psychologically to such an extreme that he would become really pissed. And stop cracking jokes. So that the reader would know that Spidey is really pissed. Also, he's wearing his black costume again, just in case someone had failed to realize that he is really, really pissed. As such, the 'Back in Black' event is not really a cross-over, it's more of a coordinated theme between the various Spider-Man books. I guess this is a good idea, because crossovers with different creative teams don't always turn out so good (remember 'The Other'...?).

I guess the Amazing Spider-Man arc could be considered the main arc, since this is where Spidey hunts down the man responsible for shooting aunt May. The quality of Straczynski's writing goes up and down a lot. Some of it is really good and some of it stinks really bad. I would put this somewhere in the middle. The story is basically just Spidey beating up henchmen while getting closer to the main villain, and sometimes he and MJ watches over aunt May and think dark thoughts. It doesn't really move anything and when it's all over nothing has changed. Spidey is just a bit more pissed than usual, and cracks fewer jokes than usual. Maybe letting aunt May die at the end would actually have made it more interesting, but as we all now, aunt May is the toughest woman in the MU, so that's just not gonna happen.

!!! SPOILER ALERT BEGIN !!!
The master mind behind the shooting is, of course, the Kingpin, and the buildup is done in such a way as to make the reader think that now, finally, the Kingpin is back and ready to rumble. But when it comes to the showdown it turns out that he is not ready to rumble, and he gets kicked around by Spidey, in a way that makes him look like a snotty-nosed, girly sissy crying for her mother. Considering the bouts these two have had in the past, I think this is very uncharacteristic, and I think it's a cheap shot introduced just to make Peter seem as pissed as the reader can possibly imagine.
!!! SPOILER ALERT END !!!

Ron Garney's art, however, I really enjoyed. He has a very solid style that suits Spider-Man perfectly, his action sequences are good and he succeeds in keeping the art moody enough to go with the story. His style reminds me a little bit of John Romita Jr., except less gritty if that makes sense.

The FNSM arc pretty much just continues where the last tpb stopped. Peter David doesn't seem to be too concerned about keeping up with Civil War and what else is going on in the MU, which can be quite refreshing at times. However, it does seem like some of what is in here wasn't really his plan. For example, in the first story line David has Spidey team up with Sandman, which, to me, looks like a plot twist that could have come from above. With Sandman out of the way, he moves on to the conclusion of the Arrow-storyline, which has been simmering in the book for a while.

I actually think FNSM started out really well, but this tpb definitely sees the low point of the series so far, and the reason for this is to found both in the writing and the art. David fails to make the characters interesting enough for the reader to actually care about them, and in Spider-Man this is an important point. I like the idea of using classic Spider-Man characters like Flash and Betty, but they should be kept in character. I don't mind the author digging deeper into their personalities (they did tend to be a little one dimensional in the Stan Lee days...), but that does not seem to be what's going on here. Also, David continues the theme of Spider-Man's supernatural origin, introduced by Straczynski which so far culminated with 'The Other', and I've decided I don't like this theme. Can't we just have Spider-Man having been bitten by a radioactive spider, and then let it be at that?

!!! SPOILER ALERT BEGIN !!!
In the second story line Betty Brant ends up shooting Arrow aka. Ero (because she's so sexy!) with a shot gun, and then hooks up with Flash Thompson. This, to me, is just using old characters for the sake of easy recognition.
!!! SPOILER ALERT END !!!

All I have to say about the art is that I fail to see anything interesting about Todd Nauck's drawing, and that's about it. Still not as bad as Liefeld though...

Just when you think Peter David has lost his knack for writing, though, this tpb also includes FNSM Annual #1, which proves all would be-doubters wrong. The two stories in here are very well told, and the first one does deliver some of the exploratory characterization of classic characters (in this case the Sandman) that I wrote about above. Also, the art (by Ronan Cliquet and Colleen Doran) is excellent, and this is probably the best part of the book. Too bad it's so short...

All in all, this book did disappoint me some. I think the basic idea of 'Back in Black' is good, but the execution just lacks some, especially the FNSM part. The ASM arc sort of stands still, and FNSM arc moves ahead, but not in any interesting direction. The FNSM annual does make things better, but not enough to push the score to average.

4/10