Today's review takes us back to the early 1990's, when comic books were at their most popular. Comic issues were selling more than they ever had before, and the industry was beginning to focus on gimmicks such as re-numberings and poly-bagging to increase sales in an increasingly speculative market. As we all know, in the next few years the bubble would burst spectacularly, but that's a whole other article. One of the great success stories of this period was the artist Todd Mcfarlane, who in the late 80's had a run as artist on Amazing Spider-Man. So popular was his work on the title, it was decided that he would be given creative control over a new Spider-Man ongoing, simply titled Spider-Man, which he would write and create art for.
The plot focuses on Calypso possessing the Lizard in order to kill Spider-Man, effectively turning it into a zombie. Spider-Man marked Mcfarlane's first attempt at writing comics, and it definitely shows. The narration is awkward and pretentious, and at multiple times switches between first and third person, which is a very jarring problem, especially when it happens frequently. However, the banter between Peter and Mary-Jane is decent, and they're believable as husband and wife. Issue 1 sees the Lizard reborn, and issue 2 a fight scene, which provides decent pacing.
As you would expect from a Mcfarlane comic, the art is mostly excellent, especially in regards to Spider-Man, the Lizard and the environments. New York is successfully made to appear darker and edgier,more akin to something like Watchmen, and the sheer detail of the Lizard impresses. Running throughout the art is a visual representation of Calypso's controlling of lizard, appearing as 'DOOM' across the art. The effect works well, especially in the second issue as we see Spider-Man poisoned and in increasing desperation. On the minus side, the normal humans look sub-par compared to the rest of the art and a couple of INCREDIBLE silly mistakes are made, such as Mary-Jane's eye colour changing from blue to green in 2 pages.
The comic as a whole is a decent enough read, but you can't shake the impression Mcfarlane simply set out to make a Watchmen styled Spider-Man comic, and it just doesn't really work, especially when all the plot seems to be a catalyst for cool art for Mcfarlane to draw. If he truly wanted a dark, edgier Spider-Man, more effort should have been put into making the plot more complex and engaging, instead of making an incredibly basic comic book plot pretentious, as he manages here. All in all, the comic is definitely a product of its time, comic in between the dark age and the consumer obsessed 90's, which means it ultimately comes across as rather confused. Although, when it was released, Spider-Man #1 became the highest selling comic book of all time, with 2.65 million copies sold, so what do I know, right?
HIS NAME -- SPIDER-MAN!
HIS POWERS -- EXTRAORDINARY!
HIS WEBLINE -- ADVANTAGEOUS!!
Right on, Todd.
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