Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #14

Another item from the unread comics stack. I seem to recall that I found this on the freebies table at ReaderCon last summer, but I could be mistaken on that.

Title: Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man
Issue: 14
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Date: January, 2007
Writer: Peter David
Penciller: Scot Eaton
Inker: John Dell
Colorist: Matt Milla
Letterer: VC's Cory Petit
Editor: Axel Alonso, Michael O'Connor

This is in the midst of the Unmasked storyline, and the lead-up to Marvel
s original Civil War. Spider-Man's true identity as Peter Parker has become public knowledge, and Peter is dealing with the fallout from that.

This issue specifically focuses on his efforts to safeguard Midtown High School, now that his connections to the school have become known. Peter enlists the help of the Beast, and gains what effectively amounts to a major new power (in one of those annoying bits of plot that will undoubtedly be forgotten in a few months either with or without some token writeoff to reset things).

While that is going on, a classic Spider-Man villain returns to action, setting up a future confrontation. And Peter Parker also experiences some further repercussions in the form of the publication of a tell-all book by an ex-girlfriend.

This was loaded with excellent visuals, and it had a classic Spider-Man vibe to it. It made good use of a lot of moving parts and kept the story rolling smoothly. I wasn't a fan of some of the the out-of-sequence aspects of the storytelling. They weren't terrible; they just didn't feel entirely justified.

Considering I hadn't read much by Marvel from this time period, this felt reasonably comfortable, even with it being a jump into the middle of a major crossover storyline. But it was still something of a transitional issue, with bigger plot developments saved for forthcoming issues.

Rating: 5.5/10

Swamp Thing #130

Okay, two days to departure, and it's comic marathon time! It's actually not that huge a marathon, but I do have five more comics in my to-read stack after this one, and I'd like to get them all read and reviewed before getting on the plane on Tuesday.

I will pretty much buy any comic with a Charles Vess cover, which I am pretty sure is how I ended up with this issue.

Title: Swamp Thing
Issue: 130
Date: April, 1993
Publisher: DC Comics (Vertigo)
Writer: Nancy A. Collins
Penciler: Scot Eaton
Inker: Kim DeMulder
Colorist: Tatjana Wood 
Letterer: John Costanza
Editor: Stuart Moore
Cover: Charles Vess

The Swamp Thing reappears, weakened and delusional, in Pennsylvania after a meeting with the Parliament of Trees. Desperate to get home, he starts moving south, hallucinating as he goes, and becoming more and more weakened and damaged by various encounters along the way, until he no longer has the strength to go on.

Meanwhile, sinister forces are closing in on those he loves ad various events and conspiracies run their course.

This was all well executed, but it has the problem that I have with a lot of the more recent (okay, admittedly, 1993 no longer counts as recent, but by "recent" what I really mean is anything-post-Allan-Moore) Swamp Thing stories is that they always feel like throwbacks to the classic stories. Everything in this issue (with the possible exception of the final page) felt like Swamp Thing material that I had seen before. It's still good, but no one seems to have ever come up with a direction for this series and this character beyond what Allan Moore did with it from 1984 to 1987.

So not a particularly original or innovative story, but well-paced and great visuals. And the Charles Vess cover is awesome.

Rating: 6/10