Marvel Adventures Spider-Man 19

Marvel Adventures Spider-Man 19

Writer- J.M. Dematteis and Sean Collins

Art-Clayton Henry and Pere Perez

Colors- Andrew Dalhouse and Jordie Bellaire

JMD is here! I’m a huge fan. Does he maintain his amazing streak on Spidey here? Only one way to find out. Leave lots of comments as well. I was bitten by a radioactive spider. It gave me super-human strength, speed, and other awesome abilities. At first it was cool. I used my powers to become a celebrity. Then my uncle was killed by a man I could have stopped. I’m doing my best to make up for that. I’m Peter Parker. You can call me Spider-Man.

Plot-

There are two stories this issue. The first is by the great John Mark Dematteis, the guy behind some of my all time favorite Spidey stories. Kraven’s Last Hunt, The Child Within, Best of Enemies, Crash and Burn, Light the Night, just to name a few of his great Spidey stories. I also heard he did some comics work that wasn’t about Spider-Man at some point.

This is a pretty fun story. It starts out with Spidey on the Silver Surfer’s board heading into space scared out of his wits. He can’t seem to remember what he’s doing on the board, and how he got in that situation. Back on Earth, in central park, the Surfer is awakened, by a little girl with a baseball bat. She came over to help the Surfer, and then recognized him. She tells him who he is, and how he helped save the world from Galactus, and what not.

She tries to get him to use his powers, and when he can’t, he thinks she is trying to trick him. Eventually, the girl convinces the Surfer she is not an enemy, and they set about discovering what happened to the Surfer, and his board. Cut to space and the Spider Surfer come across an alien out to kill the Surfer. The encounter jogs Spidey’s memory, and he takes to using his new found power cosmic to fight the alien.

Meanwhile on Earth, the girl is teaching the Surfer many useful things, like how to eat a hot dog. Throughtout the course of the exchange, his memory comes back to him, which is just as well bcecause Spidey’s fight with the alien has found it’s way to Earth.

The Surfer informs us of how all this happened. The alien sent down a device to steal Silver Surfer’s power, but Spidey happened to be in the area and they had a power swap. The Surfer realizes he does have powers, but not the power to shoot blasts, which is what he tried earlier.

The Surfer does the only sensible thing since neither of them are strong enough to defeat the alien, combines them into one two headed person, with both SS and Spidey’s powers. After they defeat the alien, the girl brings home Spidey and the Surfer for dinner, and the story all ends with them eating dinner after playing baseball. Awww

I was surprised JMD had nothing to do with the second story, as it’s a Kraven the Hunter story, and that’s kind of a character he’s known to handle well. It’s a fun little story about Kraven ambushing Spidey atop a skyscraper where he is trying to eat a pizza in peace.

The whole story is Spidey trying to get out of said Skyscraper, which Kraven has bobby trapped all over the place. Eventually Spidey gains the upper hand and knocks Kraven’s ass out, as was bound to happen.

Commentary-

This was a pretty good issue. I’m glad to see Dematteis writing Spidey again, even if it’s only half an issue of a book that’s not in continuity. This was a very light hearted approach to Spidey. JMD is seriously one of my favorite Spidey scribes. Kraven’s Last Hunt is my favorite comic book story of all time. I’m sure anyone reading this has already read that gem of a story.

The Child Within, JMDizzles sequel to KLH is every bit as good as the original story. It concerns Spidey having to go after Vermin again, after he broke out of the facility he had been kept in since the events of the past story. To make matters worse, Harry is slowly going off the deep end again. It all collides into one hell of a psychological struggle for our webbed hero.

I could go on and on about my favorite JMD Spidey stories, but this isn’t the place. He does a really great job crafting a light story that entertains till the very end.

Clayton Henry, who did the art duties on the last six issues of the recent Spider-Girl series, is on art duties here. I love his style. It’s cartonish, but not too overly so.

The second story was an average Kraven story, until Spidey decided to turn to tables on Kraven (incidentally the same way Spidey girl beat Ana in her series) by using modern office supplies and the like that Kraven isn’t used to. Fun stuff.

Overall-

A very entertaining issue 4/5