Alright. After 13 posts of event comics, back to actual Spider-Man comics. Sort of. Briefly. Spider-Man Unlimited, Vol. 2 has kept trucking along without me since issue 4, but I dipped back in for this one. Not that I recall why. Ah, there’s the reason. It’s 2 shorts as usual, and the artist of the 2nd one is why I bought this. First up, writer Marc Sumerak, penciler Greg Tocchini, inker Karl Kesel and colorist “Gotham” (A person? A group? Who knows?). We find J. Jonah interviewing a guy to be an intern, and it seems to be going poorly for a couple pages. Then the kid is asked his opinion on Spider-Man, who he says you can’t trust because he wears a mask. JJJ says they’re done.
Is that supposed to be Jessica and Kat down there with Ben?
New best friends.
Come on, Peter showing up to work with his Spidey gear clearly visible is a little much. Tyler shows Peter the headline his photo will run under, and Peter knowingly talks about how they don’t really believe all that Spider-Man: Menace stuff, only to awkwardly realize Tyler really does.
Perhaps inevitably, we find Tyler next on the way to the printer to get mockups of the paper done, as if the Bugle being printed in the building isn’t prrrretty well established, when his cab comes upon the scene of a Rhino rampage. Further perhaps inevitably, as Tyler gets out of the cab and tries to flee on foot, he winds up right in the path of the charging villain.
Well, that was clean. One assumes Tyler had a change of heart and got fired immediately. Our next tale comes from writer ME Macuaga, inker Cam Smith, colorist Rob Schwager, and penciler Pia Guerra, who is why I bought the book. She was about halfway through doing Y The Last Man at this point, a book I greatly enjoyed, with writer Brian K. Vaughan. So of course I wanted to see her take on Spider-Man. We begin with a woman working on something as she listens to someone on the radio talk about Spider-Man saving them, and thinks that’s what makes him a hero, looking out for regular people.
Well that doesn’t look good!
Hey, that seems worse! As the purse snatcher runs off with his very dangerous purse, he nearly bowls over one Peter Parker. Wouldn’t ya know it? He takes off after the thief, and the young lady loses sight of them in the crowd. Peter eventually tackles the guy, like a regular good samaritan, no costume needed.
That was a pretty wild one. Shouldn’t the bomb have triggered his danger sense? For someone tuning in to see Pia draw Spider-Man, maybe not the best story, but well-done and well-drawn. Pia didn’t do a whole lot in comics after Y the Last Man. I read she got into editorial cartoons. I assume drawing a hit as massive as Y may have given her some financial leeway. I hope so, anyway. But she was a great comics artist while she was in it.