Everything is going great for Peter in the continuing saga of the young spider, and what could possibly go wrong? Will Slott’s ever present Parker luck fascination bring down our beloved web-head? Read on, and discover
“Learning to Crawl: Part Three”
WRITER: Dan Slott
ARTIST: Ramón Pérez
COLORS: Ian Herring
LETTERS: VC’s Joe Caramagna
COVER: Alex Ross
ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Ellie Pyle
EDITOR: Nick Lowe
PLOT: The continuing saga of Spider-Man’s early days starts up in this issue with everything going great. Parker is raking in the dough taking pictures, he has a lovely group of friends, his schoolwork is excelling, and he is has a new internship with Dr. Cobbwell. He meets up with his guidance counselor for his final session and Aunt May is happy as can be. Peter considers hanging up the webs for good. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum Clayton Cole aka Clash is breaking up a big rock concert hijacking it to show his superior sound mastery. Hoping to finally get press from this event he is angered when he see’s everyone claiming him to be just another Spider-knockoff. Peter reads the headlines,
and decides to dawn the webs one more time in order to stop Clash’s rampage. In order to do it, he needs to build an expensive device that he has no money to obtain. So he steals from the AV Club, and Dr. Cobbwell’s office with the intention of paying for the equipment to be replaced once he gets the money. Unfortunately he is ratted out by Flash Thompson, and he loses everything. While at a meeting with J. Jonah Jameson he requests an advance, Jonah promptly laughs in his face, a laughter which is cut off by Clash invading the Bugle offices. A classic Spider-Man fight occurs, in which Spider-Man loses. Clash soars off to victory, and Spider-Man visits the grave of Uncle Ben unsure of where to go from here.
STORY: Last review I used the analogy of coke representing Spider-Man, well happy to say this is a great Coke Classic made with real sugar. This issue, and this mini-series in general continues to bring the joy of classic Spider-Man with each issue. Sure this issue is loaded with the Spider-Man clichés, but these are the clichés we know and love. The Bugle fight is fantastic, and really feels like an early Ditko fight scene, with Spider-Man losing the first fight, and then presumably coming out victorious in the next issue. The beginning of this book is almost a mirror image of how Spider-Man is treated by the Daily Bugle. He is snapping out of context photos of various old school Marvel Heroes, and judging them on how bad they look in the given situations. It’s a level of meta-commentary I wasn’t expecting from this issue, so it was a nice surprise.
Another interesting level to this story is the way Peter gets caught for his misdeeds by Flash Thompson. It certainly raises some questions like what was flash doing at the school so late at night, and how long has he been following around Peter for? Spider-Man continues to be an series that makes you feel more comfortable with the mistakes you’ve made in your own life, as you can see through the guise of comics, everyone makes stupid decisions sometimes. Great issue, go out and read it. This series is probably best read in conjunction with the original 60s issues.
ART: I don’t think I can ever say enough good things about this artwork, I absolutely love it. It captures the Ditko style while adding little touches that bring out the modern day aspects. For example the blood on Jonah’s forehead after he gets thrown through a building, it’s not something we see in Spider-Man comics that often, and it makes total sense to exist. The other truly wondrous aspect of this book is the magnificent colors. They are so vibrant, and really stand out on the page. We need more color like this in comics, too often are we inundated with bland uninteresting greys, and browns from media. The color in this issue, and this series deserves an Eisner…if they do Eisner’s for colors, if they don’t they definitely should! It’s a part of the comics industry I feel gets overlooked the most. Great job Ian Herring, truly powerful work.
BEST BACKGROUND CHARACTER:: Did you know that technically Mysterio has a short cameo in this book! Any long time Spider-Fans know where? I’ll tell you in the comments if no one gets it in a few days.
A+
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Why is this? Maybe Slott has better empathy for YA-lit aged characters.
Another excellent review, Andrew. And good call on the irony of Spidey taking and selling out-of-context photos of The Thing, Thor, and Iron Man!
#3 ryan3178 — That’s precisely what I took away from this comic in my own review, Ryan. Seeing the night and day difference between how Slott depicts the teenage Peter Parker and the adult Peter Parker makes for quite a fascinating study, at the very least.
@#3: Yeah. It’s kind of irritating.
It is amazing how much Slott works in his type of “Parker Luck” with the hero getting back on his feet into this mini series so well and everything on the main title just falls flat when he tries it. Its like writing two different characters, I can see now why so many writers want the high school or early college Peter Parker. They feel they can right someone who is still struggling with stuff young people with a mix of super heroics. Yet, the adult Peter has to be just completely unlucky, has to have a sex life but can’t have relationships and his villains have very very stupid motivations.
Ooo! Ooo! Mysterio is one of the aliens!! He revealed that he was behind the Tinkerer’s “alien invasion” scheme during the Stern run on SPEC. Nice reference Andrew!
And nice catch on the meta-commentary during Spidey’s photo-shoot of the various heroes out of context. I totally missed that and thought that that was a neat little bit after having read your review.
I too really enjoyed this. It was nice to see it spelled out how Peter lost the job with Dr. Cobwell. If I’m correct, I remember him working for Cobwell in ASM#2 and then just, well, not after that. Nice continuity-clean-up.
Tiny problem I had: wasn’t it made pretty explicit in ASM#3 that Spidey had never lost before fighting Doc Ock? I remember it being kind of a milestone for Pete – that was his first real loss. As much as I enjoyed how Clash “out-scienced” Spidey in this issue, that still bothered me. This seems to disregard that milestone, which is surprising since Slott is so good with his usage of Otto’s character.
Great job!
Haven’t gotten to the LCS yet, but glad you liked the issue so much! I’ve really enjoyed this series, despite some weirdness with the anachronisms. LOVE the art!