So, here we are on Bob Gale and Zeb Wells’ Spider-Man: Brand New Day, vol. 2 , and I feel like I’m almost over being cheesed at how much Marvel fucked up Straczynski’s great run with that stupid stupid retcon. Almost.
But leaving that aside, what we have here is some rather uneven Spider-Man stories. Bob Gale’s story — classic Lizard-inspired villain of the week stuff — is essentially okay, and works fine with this retro-inspired take on Spider-Man. But Zeb Wells’ more mystical storyline is substantially better (though it feels a bit like watered-down Straczynski).
Leaving the content of the stories — and that horrible, horrible retcon — aside, I do have to say that I’m very much in favor of their new publishing strategy with Spider-Man. Instead of having three or four titles featuring the same main character but with totally different storylines and feels (and everyone knowing that Amazing is the “real” one and the others are just fluff), they decided to unify on a single title published more frequently and split up among different writers. So they’ve got a solid format, they’ve got competent writers (and at least one, Slott, who’s more than just competent), and as soon as I can forgive them for that stupid, stupid retcon, I’ll probably be pleased with the result.
Maybe next volume, right?
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