Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man wasn't the first book I dropped after I started this blog (Sensational Spider-Man gets that distinction), but it was one of the ones that didn't survive the first year. I don't think there was really any specific need for this book, outside of Marvel's urge to put more Spider-Man comics on the stands, because idiots like me would buy things that said "Spider-Man" on the cover. And it worked, at least for a while. Until about the middle of 2006, really. After that I showed at least a little discretion.
In theory, Peter David was probably planning to focus on more ground-level stuff. JMS was still writing Amazing Spider-Man, which seemed most likely to deal with Avengers-related stuff, so that left a niche for stories where Spider-Man deals with smaller threats, things more closely related to his teaching gig. What it left for Marvel Knights/Sensational Spider-Man I'm less clear about.
In practice, not so much. The fact the book opened with tie-ins to The Other should have been the first hint. I kept this one issue, because I enjoy the sequence where Peter, having returned from the dead just prior, takes Mary Jane on a ride around the city. They swing past the Bugle, Jonah leans out the window to yell, MJ flips him off (with the offending digit tastefully obscured by a pigeon. Because, "flip him the bird", get it?) Not a great reason to hold onto a comic for 15 years, but 2006 was not a great year for Spider-Man comics, I took what I could get.
It's too bad. I think this was the second time Marvel got Mike Wieringo as artist on a Spider-Man book. The first was, unfortunately, the original Sensational Spider-Man, back when Ben Reilly was being Spider-Man, something Wieringo apparently didn't love. He wanted to draw the real Spider-Man. At least he got his wish this time, even if the stories he got to draw were kind of a waste. Again, The Other. Plus the story where David makes fun of bloggers portraying them as self-important losers with no life of their own. Truly an epic for the times.
I dropped the book about the time it looked as though an Uncle Ben from another universe had shown up and was a killer. I recall being outraged they would dare to do something like that, which is really embarrassing. Nowadays I'd just shrug, maybe roll my eyes. I think it turned out to be the Chameleon of some other universe, possibly from the distant future (the same year as that other Spider-Man David created when he did the original Spider-Man/Spider-Man 2099 crossover), but I was long gone by then.
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