These last few years, I often wondered why Batman had, like, three of four monthly books but Spider-man just had one, The Amazing Spider-Man, bi-monthly. Spider-man is Marvel's biggest and best character. Why the hell aren't they milking it dry? Well our prayers are answered this month because Peter Parker has a new monthly comic. Whereas writer Dan Slott has made The Amazing Spider-Man a globe-trotter and millionaire and the stories are mega and epic and huge, this new book is supposed to be set in New York City and smaller. Back to the roots and so forth. I guess it doesn't help that in this first issue Parker travels to Chicago. But I suppose the idea behind the book is solid. And Marvel does have other Spider books, just either in parallel worlds (The Amazing Spider-man: Renew Your Vows) or with other characters (Spider-Man 2099, Ben Reilly: The Scarlet Spider, Spider-Gwen...and Miles Morales in Spider-Man). What we really want is for Parker to be in NYC, dating MJ, taking pictures for The Bugle, and fighting Dr. Octopus. But I suppose that's all been done before. So this new #1 is sort of a half-way there approach. Parker is in NYC. No MJ. No mega-traditional villain just yet. Writer Chip Zdarsky has made this book pretty much an all out comedy, though, which is good and bad. What this book is, though, is fun. It's light, breezy, forgettable. The craziest thing about Spider-man books is that when you think about it...when was the last great run? Maybe J. Michael Straczynski's run? And before that it was probably when McFarlane was drawing it. So while The Amazing Spider-Man has been entertaining and a fun ride, it hasn't produced a whole hell of a lot of excellence in a long time. When you look at Batman you can rattle off a bunch of great recent runs, from The New 52's Snyder/Capullo run to Morrison's lengthy, multiple book epic. Will writer Chip Zdarsky and artist Adam Kubert's Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man end up a legend? No. It'll be a fun romp, but we're all still waiting for Marvel to put Jason Aaron on the flagship and be done with it. ***
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