As some of you know from my short lived weekly comic review articles, I was not a fan of the Spider-Man books at the time and for the most part im still not!
However back in the ancient days of November 2011, I heard about a new ongoing series featuring Spider-Man teaming up with various other super heroes.
Now I’m still strongly against the Avengers constantly showing up in Amazing Spider-Man when a tittle made specifically for team ups with them exists, but I put my prejudice aside and got into Avenging Spider-Man and I still dont regret it (mostly).
This trade picks up the first five issues as you guys can see in the tittle of the article. However the first real story arc is three issues long, while the last two are Hawkeye and Captain America team ups.
What immediately got me into this book was the humor, this book is hilarious! There are so many cool gags and super hero banter that I wish the book stayed like this instead of becoming just a jumbled mess later on. The gags range from the usual Spidey smack talk during battles, to things like him pulling down a warlords pants and making a fool out of him in front of his whole army, thus defeating him.
The first story is a Spidey/Red Hulk team up where Jameson is taken into the underground beneath Manhattan, he discovers that a group of subterranean creatures called the Molans want to conquer Earth and Jameson is our champion. Hilarity and an incredibly drawn battles ensue.
The fourth issue is a Spidey/Hawkeye team up where they’re after the Serpent Society. It seems like just an issue where Hawkeye is acting like a jerk but we soon realize why he is so. Being one of the few non powered Avengers, Hawkeye feels that he constantly has to push himself further and further. If hedoesn’t he will feel useless as he is after all, just a guy with a bunch of fancy arrows, but he wants to prove himself he’s more than that.
I found this an interesting look at non powered heroes and we could see how they feel being next to giants and gods like Thor or the Hulks.
The last issue deals with Peter finding “Liberty Bonds,” an old WW2 era newspaper that Cap himself drew when he was just a kid. At first Cap doesn’t even want to look at it because it reminds him of the week sickly man he was.
But as the issue goes on Cap slowly realized that no matter what kind of childhood you might have had, there will always be good and bad parts too it. But just looking at it negatively while completely ignoring the good doesn’t make you a stronger or better person. Cap has struggled in the past to deal with life in our modern time and I was glad that he was able to back to being that little boy in Brooklyn who dreamed of serving his country.
Another good thing of this book is the downtime banter between heroes. Zeb Wells is THE man for this kind of stuff, while heroes are perceived as these immortal nigh invincible gods, when in reality they’re just people like us, drinking coffe, reading the newspaper, talking about recent events and so on.
I found this funny and intriguing at the same time, it’s also a detriment because when Wells left so did much of the charm and humor of the book. I hope that he can one day return to Avenging Spider-Man and may expand on these ideas that he laid down the ground work for.
But the thing that instantly made this book a must buy was the art, Joe Madureira is single handedly the best Spider-Man artist ive ever seen. His art is cartoony and stylish while remaining detailed and diverse, it perfectly fits Spider-Man and again, I wish he was able to last beyond just three issues…
But despite my favourite creative team on Spider-Man now gone, Avenging Spider-Man Vol. 1 is still a must buy, its funny, stylish, deep, engaging and just a blast to read, also its entirely user friendly and you don’t need to have ANY previous Spider-Man or MU knowledge. I highly recommend that you guys check this one out.
Final Verdict: A
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