It’s International Day of Awesomeness (well, it was when I began writing the review, at least) and how better to celebrate than with a brand new Spidey book? It’s not just a new book, it’s a new era! It says it on the cover, folks! Just like the All New, All Daring! of old! Prediction? You will either love this issue or hate it. Me? Well, I can’t give away ALL the secrets in the opening blurb, can I? I can? OK – I liked this issue a lot, folks, so if you hated it, hear me out and tell me where I went wrong. If you loved it, read on and tell me what goodies I missed! See you below the opening credits!
Credit Where Credit Is Due
Story Title: Let’s Try Something New!
Writer: Nick Spencer
Artist: Patrick Gleason
Colorist: Edgar Delgado
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramanga
Cover Artist: Patrick Gleason and Edgar Delgado
Asst. Editor: Lindsey Cohick
Editor: Nick Lowe
Published: March 10, 2021
Remedial ASM 101
Peter’s had a tough time of late. Kindred has really gotten under his skin, but that doesn’t matter right now. It’s a new era! So, Peter’s rooming with Boomerang and Randy. Boomerang is somewhat reformed and Randy’s dating a supervillain. Also they have a pet alien. Also Boomerang has been collecting pieces of the Tablet thingee and Kingpin wants it. That should catch you up.
The Story – Pay Attention, This Will Be on the Test
Kingpin wants his felonious friends to help him get the Tablet pieces from Boomerang. Peter takes a job at Threats and Menaces with Norah Winters because he needs to pay rent and taking pictures of Baby Gog isn’t bringing in enough cash. They give Peter a new suit to give to Spider-Man and it gives live feed of him fighting criminals. JJJ is the man in the chair and feeds him lines and actions and sponsorships. The Daily Bugle is not amused (though why they would be watching it is beyond me). Their next big story is an expose on Tombstone and they are going to go after his daughter. Cue Randy to come in and see his father.
What Passed and Failed
PASS – Glory’s back and she’s still rocking those hoop earrings! (I do love me some hoop earrings!)
FAIL – Ugly Gog – Geez! He’s supposed to be the Spider-Man’s Baby Yoda, but instead he looks more like Mac from Mac and Me.
PASS (with bonus points!) – Silvermane’s Head – Guys, if you have not read Superior Foes of Spider-Man, get off your rear ends, pay for a Marvel Unlimited subscription and read it. NOW.
FAIL – The art – It’s not all bad, but there were moments that really threw me. Gog, as shown above, and Peter Parker does NOT look like Peter Parker. We shouldn’t have to have a character tell us who the main character of the book it.
PASS – The new suit and job! More on why later.
FAIL – Too much recap. We could have had some current scenes with Boomerang talking about where he’s storing the tablet pieces or about his tablet-tingle rather than just some panels from the old stories.
???? – Not sure if this is a pass or fail – did you notice that Kindred is back to two centipedes? Does that mean something or just an art-typo on Gleason’s part?
OOTI (Onomatopoeia of the Issue)
On a scale of 1 (POW) to 10 (BLRKBQRKPQRBLNB), THWEP rates a… Well, I’m torn. On the one hand, it’s messing with an iconic onomatopoeia. On the other hand, it is showing that this suit is inferior since it can’t make the right noise. Hmmm… I’m going to default to you guys. What would YOU rate this onomatopoeia as?
Analysis
We Need a Fun Story – Watch any action movie or read any Shakespeare play and you will notice that right after the most intense moments, we get a comedic or light-hearted break. Even Hamlet has a few funny moments. We’ve just had some heavy issues and we need this break. This issue promises some serious action in the future, but also offers a ton of possible light-hearted, fun moments while we wait for Kindred to resurface.
Boomerang/Kingpin – While we do not get a lot of Boomerang in this issue, the set up for more to come is tremendous. The possibilities of infighting among Kingpin’s squad is already going between Owl and Hammerhead. I want to see an all out Donnybrook with these gangsters!
While we are talking about Kingpin, let’s take a moment to look at those hungry eyes of his:
Right? I know you looked at it and thought, that’s odd, look at all that white space UNDER the iris. Huh, probably just an inking or coloring error. But then, we get this panel shortly after and it focuses on the eyes, letting us know this intentional:
So, long time readers of my work here at the Crawlspace may remember a term sanpuka. This is the science of judging someone’s character if they have three sides of their eyeball showing the white part.
Kingpin’s not playing, folks! He’s one step away from old #5 Crazy-Eyes Norman!
See, this is the kind of deep dive that you can only get from the Crawlspace!
Daily Bugle/Randy – So, besides reminding us where Glory is, the Daily Bugle scene is setting up some old fashion family conflict between Robby and Randy. I’m hoping most of this plays out behind the scenes for Peter for a while. My big question is, does this panel imply that Randy is about to come clean and tell dad about Janice? And if so, will Randy be used by dear old dad to infiltrate Tombstone’s illicit business dealings? That could be fun. Or angsty waste of time, but with Spencer, I’m thinking fun.
Peter’s New Job & Spidey’s New Suit
OK, this is where we are going to get into the weeds a bit. This section of the issue is what will make people like or hate this book.
Threats and Menaces – New job! What exactly is this job? I remember her saying in the podcasting issue that she doesn’t want his sorry photographs. It seems that his job at TNM is the liaison for Spider-Man? If so, I guess he’ll be getting two paychecks? Are we going to explore the ethicality of that in a future issue? Most likely, since it was hinted at a bit in this one.
Are we supposed to like this job? Not at all. Peter is in a down point in his life and needs to build himself back up after the failure of Parker Industries. I mean, he’s working for Boomerang taking pictures of a pet alien. You don’t go much lower than that. So, no need to compare working for Winters with any other previous job Peter’s had in the past because, mainly, he isn’t working for Norah Winters.
He’s working for the Chameleon.
Don’t forget that. Chameleon has some major plan and it wasn’t the arms deal we saw earlier (and let’s hope that when he plays his hand, Theresa doesn’t make a return appearance).
The opportunity for hilarity is abundant in this assuming it doesn’t last too long. I want to note here that in this scenario, Spider-Man is placed in a funny, yet awkward position by having to read lines that JJJ feeds him and having his suit advertise for Undies (Maybe a clever reference to Underoos and Brad’s interview?), he is not, though, THE joke, as he was written way back when.
New Suit – I saved the most controversial for last. As soon as the new suit was released, I saw people freaking out on line, but come on – we KNOW it is not a permanent change, so we can get past that initial knee-jerk reaction and look at what this offers us – story potential. Just like the job, are we supposed to like the suit? No. The only thing that screams Spider-Man with this suit are the eyes. The color is off. The chest spider is odd. The Thiwip! noise is off (and doesn’t even have an exclamation point!). No, the suit was designed specifically to NOT look like a Spider-Man suit. On top of that, it supposedly makes him stronger and faster? All the while shooting up advertisements in the air when he is done fighting crime? And on top of all of that, they go out of their way to make it look like SCREWBALL’s schtick? The cringe-worthy factor in this is . . . AMAZING! This is SO BAD that it is ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL!
And best of all, it’s not just for joke purposes. Let’s consider this – this thing is collecting data out the wazoo. Data on Spider-Man. The last time this happened was with Iron Man, but now, who is collecting the data? One possibility is Norah Winters, who may choose to reveal Peter identity for ratings or blackmail Peter into doing what she wants for “journalistic relevancy”. The other, more sinister, and more likely answer to that is the Chameleon, who is the one funding this suit to begin with. So let’s look for a scene in the future where Spider-man does something odd, criminal, or whatnot and pulls his mask off to the reader and we see that it is indeed Peter Parker. At that point we’ll know that it is actually Chameleon and Peter is locked up somewhere, possibly in his suit which has restrained him.
And let’s not also forget that JJJ is involved and his ability to keep Spider-Man’s identity a secret is not high on my probability list. He did spill the bens (or at least open the can enough) for the Green Goblin to put it together.
OH! One more thing! I remember that one f the preview images had the word STARK in the background out of nowhere, so I’m betting that Tony will invest in advertising on Spider-Man just to piss him off.
I’m ready! Bring on the madcap action and mayhem!
Extra Credit
Goes to all of you. I love talking Spider-Man with you guys. You have great insight and even though Evan and Hornacek are prone to quote Shawshank Redemption way too much, I love all the comments on and off topic. Plus, we all have different opinions and you guys are OK with that. No one is made to feel stupid for what they liked or made to feel like they are not a true fan because how could they accept this, that, or the other?!?! You guys rock and you are the reason we write these reviews each issue! Well, that and the high paycheck Brad gives me (not to mention access to the Crawlspace beach house even though I do have to wait for those elitist podcasters to pick their weekends first).
Final Grade
I loved this issue! It was flawed and it was too much setup. I do wish at times Spencer would compress his story telling, but it was fun! And it promises more fun to come!
B+
What’s Next?
• Kingpin makes it personal with Peter Parker and New York City itself will pay the price!
• And another fuse lit more than thirty issues ago reaches its explosive destination.
Nick Lowe has asked people to let the Spider office know how they are doing by sending an email to spideyoffice@marvel.com and to make sure you mark it “OK to print”. If you get published, make sure to draw our attention to it!
‘Nuff Said!
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While different writters can give different spins on the character, the core of said character can’t change.
For Peter it means that he is responsible, kind hearted, smart, competent as a hero and witty. His job, supporting cast, financial situation and so on can change (it may be progression) but thje core wont be impacted by these changes.
When Peter married MJ, it was progression. He was moving on with his life.
While the Peter from the 90s was darker and grittier, he still kept the core intact. When he accidentally hit MJ, he felt terrible. Cause he was responsible for it. When he was told he was a clone and moved to Portland, he still couldn’t stay away from his responsability as SPider-man, only really giving them up when he lost his power. Only to start helping again the second his powers (and responsabilities) returned
He was still in character in the 00s when he became a teacher. Hell it was a HUGE progression. He was finally getting a steady job, inspiring the young impressionable minds in and out of the red and blues.
When he joined the avengers, it felt like a progression. Peter was finally learning to work together with the greater Marvel Universe, rather than being a loner.
Unmasking in front of the camera to support the Registration act, it was in character. He was taking responsability for his double life.
But when he became a Tony Stark Fanboy? that was out of character.
When he did a deal with the devil to wash his hands of the repercussions of his action… that’s WAY out of character.
When he became a useless buffon that needed the Avengers to clean up his mess… that was out of character.
I’d argue that even though it wasn’t written well, the PI saga was a great idea on paper. But as everything in slott’s run, it was a great idea with a garbage execution.
So to me the 2010s from OMD to the end of slotts run was mostly Peter acting out of character. It wasn’t the fact that it wasn’t MY Peter Parker… it was the fact that this character i was reading didn’t show the core quality of my favorite hero.
Same reason I HATE the MCU Peter Parker. It was clearly Miles Morales, but they were too scared they couldn’t sell the movie if the character portrayed wasn’t Peter. It’s a disservice to both Peter, as it shows Marvel doesn’t understand the character and Miles since they basically thing he isn’t strong enough to carry a movie on his own (which he is as Into the SPider-Verse clearly showed)
Rambling Over!
I think there are certain essentials to Peter Parker, for him to stay Peter Parker. He needs to be idealistic and kind-hearted; he needs to be sarcastically funny as Spider-Man; he needs to live and think like an Everyman; he needs to have an independent streak; he needs to be a science nerd; he needs family (kin and/or friends) around him; and he needs to be driven by an absolute determination to never to make his “Uncle Ben mistake” again.
Cool debate.
It makes me wonder how the Spider-Man comparisons with Batman are important, due to the longevity of the characters; something I always try to do in order to establish a point regarding the “actions”, “feelings” or “thoughts” of the web-crawler with the era the stories analyzed were published, with the age Peter is supposed to be.
Should Spider-Man change or evolve? Is his Ditko/Lee/Romita template unchangeable? Is he a character allowed to do so, or are these new jobs and uniforms just experimentalism?
Are Spider-Man stories supposed to go in circles, but in just different versions?
These are the things I always think about that before writing about him – because unlike DC’s characters (whose continuity history is reversible and rebootable) -, his life story, his continuity is somehow stable, so looking back into his history makes sense; it will not be a different version, it will be Peter Parker.
He will be sixty years old next year; lots of stories. Lots to consider.
@Mark:
Despite my trollish comment, I agree. It’s the kind of argument I once tried to propose to an old friend of mine: with so many writers, it’s impossible to say what’s in character anymore, because each of them write their own take of him.
However, after some years had passed (and I read even more Spidey’s stories) I realized that what he was trying to say is that there are some core elements to the character that should always be present: one, for example, is his sense of responsibility. And I think this is why I feel Slott wrote Otto better than Peter: he understood that character better.
As for the author of that mail, if I recall correctly he deemed himself a long-time fan, so he should have read other characterizations.
@Aqu@ – That’s an interesting point. The thing is, with Spider-Man having been written in the 1960s, he’s gone through so many changes and his character has been written in so many ways, it is difficult to say THIS is Spider-Man, not THAT. Peter David wrote Spider-Man in PPTSSM as dark and gritty. It was the tone of the book and many people gladly include that as part of Spider-Man and as being written in character (I include myself in that), but it stands in contrast to the Spider-Man written in the late ’70s and the then again to the angst-ridden Spider-Man in the clone-saga. For better or for worse, the way Spider-Man was written in the first two decades of the 2000s IS Spider-Man, no matter how out of synch it is with other characterizations of the hero.
I think that is what we like so much about Spencer. He understands the classic character of Spider-Man, the one that grew as the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s progressed. Most writers would just ignore events that didn’t really fit their vision and move forward, Spencer, instead, is seeking to take what was written that stands so out of place in the ‘great responsibility’ that we know and love, and is making it fit into Peter’s character. All of us act out of character once in a while. Spencer is taking those out of character moments and is now trying to make Peter deal with the consequences of those actions in character.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that with so many writers putting their perspectives on the character, depending on where you started reading, your understanding of who Spider-Man is is different. That reader’s understanding of the character of Spider-Man is the 2000s Spider-Man. Is that a valid reading of the character? I think so. Is it unfortunate that Spider-Man’s character had to go through that transformation? Absolutely. What we need to do is to all chip in and buy that poor letter writer a subscription to Marvel Unlimited so he can see how far the character had gone from its roots. Then he may be more into how Spencer is moving the character back to center while not undoing the events that he grew up reading.
I always think that these things must be harder for Batman fans. That character has gone through so many changes in the last 80 years! Is Batman dark and brooding? Yes! Is Batman campy and funny? Yes! Is Batman a detective? Yes! Is Batman one step away from being a psychopath? Yes! Does Batman kill? Yes! Does Batman not kill? Yes! Geez!
I really don’t know where I’m going with this ramble and rather than deleting and starting over, I’ll just say this – Spencer fits MY understanding of the character which is why I have enjoyed reading his work the last 60 issues, even when I wish he would pick up the pace!
I’ll take that extra credit, but I have to point out the guy who sent a mail to the office, praising Slott and disdaining Spencer.
I’m shocked. Not because he liked Slott’s stories (that’s understandable), but because he felt Slott wrote Peter in-character.
Shocked.
@Mark: “Geez, man! Do I go onto your reviews and try to stir up trouble? No!”
Rule #6
@Michael, @Chi-Town, and @Evan
Michael – The spider-sense is such a tricky thing that I’m willing to give a pass to it anytime it doesn’t work the way it should. I think I remember hearing somewhere that Ditko just drew some random lines and Stan Lee asked what those were. They were nothing, but Ditko said it was his spider-sense and Lee ran with it. Maybe that’s not true, but I’m sure I found that story out somewhere on the Internet and I believe that people aren’t just allowed to post anything that might not be true on it. It could be that the suit poses no inherent threat, but the data that it collects can be used in that way, so it doesn’t go off. Iron Man’s suit was collecting data to be used against Spider-Man and the sense didn’t warn him, so at least there is precedence. Maybe since it has something to augment the sense, it also dampens it to itself, a la symbiote suit. And you’re right, I was a bit too hard on JJJ! Also, I didn’t think about Janice being involved in stealing the Tablet because I was thinking he was setting up multiple stories that would play out over the next, oh, fifty issues or so, but it would make sense for those arcs to collide. Good eyes!
Chi-Town – Geez, man! Do I go onto your reviews and try to stir up trouble? No! I’m over here minding my own business and you throw shade out of nowhere! You nincompoop!
Evan – Sadly, I made a typo there. Dangers of cut and paste. Now I feel like Chi-Town. 🙁 But thanks for bringing it to my attention! It’s fixed! I figured with an OotI like that, I would need to outsource to your expertise. I know that if there is anyone who can back me up on a questionable onomatopoeia, it’s my buddy Evan! About those eyes, I ran across that way back when when doing a Cobwebs article. We see someone’s eye with the whites on top AND bottom and evidently, that’s just not a thing, but there is this whole science to mapping people’s three whites! You might want to print that image out and keep a laminated copy in your wallet in case you run across someone like that. All jokes aside, I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought it was weird to get two images of Kingpin apparently caught in the middle of rolling his eyes! And you know what? It’s not so bad when the waiting justifies our rushing to judgement either! 🙂
My comment below should read “…justifies our NOT rushing to judgment…”
Sorry!
@Mark — I knew you wouldn’t let me down with that BttF link. I almost didn’t even have to click on it.
I’m assuming for the OotI you meant “THWEP” (as pictured), rather than “THOOM” (as captioned). If that’s the case, even though only the one vowel is changed (just to be all new and all daring), somehow I was able to imagine the sound in my head, so I think it gets extra points for that. I’d even go so far as giving it an 8, because here the onomatopoeia itself is used to underscore the contrast between this suit and the previous one. Using a sound effect for effective storytelling is what onomatopoeia is all about — well, that and being fun to say. On the other hand, maybe this new suit just isn’t such a good speller.
I feel bad saying this, but when I saw Kingpin’s eyes in the preview, I, too, was struck by them and had to check the credits to see if Mark Bagley was penciling. Now, thanks to your review, I understand that this was clearly intentional and we can now adequately gauge Kingpin’s intentions.
Most of all, I just want to say that I love when being patient and awaiting the full reveal bears out our faith in a writer or justifies our rushing to judgment before we know the full story. As you said, the costume itself is laughable, but that was purposeful and will pay dividends as the story unfolds. Granted, it seems to me that Peter would be a bit more concerned about privacy issues, but maybe it’s a testament to how desperate he is for money at this point. I have to say — until you mentioned it, believe it or not, I had completely forgotten about Parker Industries. When I read it, I thought, “Oh — Right, that happened. Huh.” I must commend Peter on his ability to compartmentalize, by the way. After all the Kindred stuff — and, you know, dying and coming back to life several times — I’d have trouble setting it aside. I guess that’s what makes Peter different from Harry.
No Shawshank Redemption quotes this time. I let a friend borrow my special edition DVD (with the Drew Struzan painting!), and I haven’t gotten it back. Lucky you!
Nice review Mark, but as for your Extra Credit To all those who read our reviews…don’t trust him, he’ll find a flaw and exploit it!
My guess is that Janice is going to be the one to steal the Tablet of Life and Destiny.
I considered the possibility that the suit might be boobytrapped, but then I remembered that Peter’s Spider-Sense didn’t go off around the suit, which would seem to suggest the suit isn’t. In fact, Peter’s Spider-Sense didn’t go off around Norah at all, which would seem to suggest that whatever she and the Chameleon have planned doesn’t involve harming Peter or Jonah. (If Norah and the Chameleon are planning to, for example, assassinate a Supreme Court judge, then Peter’s Spider-Sense probably wouldn’t go off, although that’s been written inconsistently over the years.)
In JJJ’s defense, the last time he let slip enough information for the Goblin to remember, he had been held captive for days. It’s not easy to keep vital information secret when a psychopath is holding you captive.