What I Bought 1/9/2019

There were six comics I wanted that came out the first two weeks of January. Since I haven't left town since New Year's Eve, I only managed to find one. So here we are, the first time I'm trying to buy a Spider-Man title regularly in, 9 years? Those five months in 2010 Amazing Spider-Man strung together a bunch of stories that sounded interesting by creative teams I liked? Geez, no pressure fellas.

Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #1, by Tom Taylor (writer), Juann Cabal (artist), Nolan Woodward (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - Spidey looks like he needs to build up his lower legs.

Peter has a neighbor who is in trouble with some strange, very strong people. Strong enough to punch Peter through a wall and knock him cold. You know, I thought his spider-sense buzzed stronger for bigger threats, so you'd think he'd have known to dodge, instead of playing at being hapless Peter. Anyway, strange orange children are involved.

Other than that, the issue is mostly Peter or Spider-Man being a nice person and helping people in various ways. That's nice. There's also a backup story where Aunt May might have cancer now. That's less nice. I assume Stark gave her an artificial heart after the 27th heart attack and the radiation is to blame.

It's not bad as a first issue goes, although I'm not sure how forcefully it makes the case for someone to keep buying it. It feels as though the book is trying to sell itself on the little things, Peter's interactions with his neighborhood, which might be a hard sell. Taylor gets you caught up on as much of Peter's current status as is relevant at the moment. His roommates are Randy Robertson and Boomerang. That whole thing about him being guilty of plagiarism because Octavius stole some of his own work when he was busy stealing Peter's body. Taylor didn't overload it, though, which is smart. Lets the book focus on its own stuff. Bring out whatever is necessary from what Spencer and Zdarsky are doing as you need to.

Cabal has a clean art style, not much in the way of unnecessary lines. There are enough talking scenes he can show off his range of expressions. We'll see how it goes during extended action scenes. Although I doubt the stairwells in Peter's apartment building would be that clean and free of garbage and graffiti. At minimum there must be kids running around tearing shit up, but OK, whatever. I thought Woodward overdid it on the coloring for the spider-sense. He's not just doing the wavy blue lines above Peter's head, he gave him blue glowy eyes like he's astral projecting. It's a little much. Otherwise, the color work is fine. There's not much costumed stuff going on, so most of it is more understated tones. Colors aren't dull, but they don't really pop off the page.