What I Bought 1/26/2019 - Part 4

I hate when they say a game is going to start at a given time, and then it takes another 15-20 minutes before the game actually begins. I don't want to listen to the TV people yammer on or interview someone. Just play the game! OK, last book from two weekends ago. Although by the time this posts, hopefully the two books I hadn't found from January have arrived in the mail.

Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #2, by Tom Taylor (writer), Juann Cabal (artist), Nolan Woodward (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - I don't know if it's going to be a trend of my reviewing this book all by its lonesome, but it sure seems like I'm going to struggle to find things to say about the covers for it.

Spidey calls the Torch to stay with the orange. The orange kids know the Human Torch, but not Spider-Man. Yeah, I'm calling bullshit on that. Moving on, one of the odd strong guys from last issue was watching the apartment building, and Spidey tries to question him, but the guys escape by bringing a building down. But he gets help finding the license plate from a cop who is married to the guy who drove off the bridge last issue. Spider-Man visits a deserted consulate, starts to fight the same guy from earlier, only to have his old lady neighbor Marnie (the way Cabal draws her face reminds me of Frank Quietly's work) step in and reveal a) she's a costumed person, and b) she knows Peter Parker is Spider-Man.

I continue to enjoy the small parts. Spidey feeding the pigeons on the roof of the police station while he waits for Detective Sebbens. Spidey casually pulling on his webline to bring that bumper over so he can show her the plate he'd like run. And the just lightly surprised look the detective has. She's not goggle-eyed or anything, because it isn't that strange, but it does come out of nowhere for her. The little bit of dust or smoke in the panel where he backflips over the consulate gate to set up an attack, because it's just a little visual cue of his movement. Helping to track his course over the panels. I should probably enjoy the discussion of the lack of pockets on Spidey's costume, but he had this discussion with himself before, in the JMS run. Zippers and velcro were concluded to be impractical.

As for the larger story, I mean it could be interesting. Taylor hasn't really gotten far enough into it, other than telling us there's a bunch of "secret" history that Spider-Man doesn't know anything about.  The Next Issue box is literally, "You don't know anything". Yeah, no shit, because someone hasn't told us anything yet. So when it actually starts to come together, maybe it'll be cool. Or, Spider-Man can point out he doesn't care why Leilani was kidnapped, only where he needs to go to rescue her. That would be appropriate for him.