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

2099 Limited

Title: 2099 Limited
Date: 1993
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: Pat Mills, Tony Skinner, John Francis Moore, Peter David, Gerard Jones
Penciler: Tom Morgan, Pat Broderick, Grant Miehm, Rick Leonardi, Ron Lim, Dwayne Turner
Inker: James Palmiotti, Tom Florimonte, Bud La Rosa, Al Williamson, Adam Kubert, Dwayne Turner, Kyle Baker

Ah, the bright and shiny days of the early '90s, when comics were, well, shiny. This is a preview ashcan giveaway that was packaged with issue #7 of Hero magazine. It previews the full line of 2099 titles from Marvel, which feature one of the many zillions of possible alternate futures of the Marvel Universe. The world is a fairly generic dystopia that is played for laughs half the time (a thirty-mile long mall in California, and so on). The X-Men 2099 story looks like it has the most potential here, with a young mutant named Fitzgerald making his way across the desert to a refugee city that exists outside of the corporate totalitarian power structure.

Punisher 2099 had a generic fight scene featuring what had to be the dumbest "smart" weapon ever. It's a guided needle-bullet that never misses, but always lodges in the target's arm and then burrows to the heart, which of course gives Punisher time to remove it. Um... Why not just program it to always shoot the target in the head? Oh, right. Because that would make sense.

Spider-Man 2099 concentrated on character interactions. The spider-man character doesn't appear in costume. Much like the Doom 2099, Ravage 2099, and 2099 Unlimited (featuring Hulk 2099) bits, there really wasn't enough story to get a sense of what it was all about.

None of these titles rose above the level of generic in these previews, and the editors might have been better off devoting the space to show a bit more from one or two titles rather than trying to preview the whole line.

But the cover is shiny.

Rating: 4/10