Back in Black: Another triumph for Marvel?
Thus far, the "Back in Black" storyline running through all the Spider-Man comics has been loads of fun. I stopped reading Amazing Spider-Man on a regular basis for a while following Stracynski's deplorable "Sins Past" storyline, but Civil War was so much fun that I decided to give Amazing another try after Peter unmasked in CW#2 and thus far it has been the best of the post-CW Spiderman comics.
There are continuity problems to be sure, and these have been pointed out by other bloggers, most notably: Spiderman returns to his black and white duds, which he first donned back in 1984's Secret Wars, despite the fact the reason he ditched them in the first place was because it traumatized his wife to see him dressed as the psycho killer who lated adopted the suit and terrorized her (Venom)
Yet, at the end of ASM# 539, Spidey is so grief stricken by his aunt May being shot by a sniper's bullet that he decides to return to his old costume and Mary Jane doesn't utter a word of protest! Well, despite these glitches in continuity, as I said above, the story has worked rather well, most notably in Amazing where a dark tale of revenge has been weaved (pardon the awful pun.)
Sensational and Friendly Neighborhood have been a little bit more silly with the former being the best of the two, in my opinion, with a story arc featuring a string of Spider-Man impostors descending in Manhattan. I was somewhat bugged by the appearance of Sandman in the latter which I viewed as another needless ploy by Marvel to exploit the release of Spiderman 3, but be that as it may, it was still cool to see how each artist in all the books renders Spidey in his gorgeous black suit. I was also dissapointed to see Angel Medina have such a short run as artist over on Sensational, but maybe he was just slated to pencil one book. This is a shame, as I think he would be awesome as a regular artist and I would be more willing to stick with the comic for the long haul if he was making extended contributions. I dig his style and have done so since he was drawing Spawn over at Image.
Peter David, one of my all time favorite writers, is coming up with some quarky stories, but they are all over the map, one month getting the saga of the green goblin and Ben Parker from a future dimension to the most recent arc of Ms. Arrow who apparently turns into a collection of spiders to form some sort of spider monster. Weeeird. We'll see where this title is headed in future installments.
