This one is apparently gonna be a Rashomon-type riff or something. Accordingly, I guess, it has 3 different writers in Marc Guggenheim, Bob Gale and Dan Slott. Bit weird, leaving out just one of the 4 “brain trust” guys, but maybe Zeb Wells was busy. Who’s drawing? Why, Paulo Siqueira, of course, inked by Amilton Santos and himself and colored by Antoni Fabela. Why would it be anyone we’ve seen so far? Why would Marvel’s biggest single-character title rate regular artists? I mean, obviously, not even Bagley could do 36 issues a year (I bet Romita, Jr. could have in the early 80s), but at least one or two regular contributors would be nice. But we’re very much entering the “art doesn’t matter” era of comics, where fans follow writers first, characters 2nd, artists never. A practice that continues today! I think the average comic book reader these days just glances at the red blob the word balloon is pointing at long enough to make sure it’s Spider-Man and moves on. Even as comic book art has only become more complex and sophisticated, readership has never cared less. It’s a dark time. In a vacuum, Paulo Siqueira is a pretty good artist, but like Jiminez, he falls into the unfortunate trap of worshipping Todd McFarlane in this issue, something evident from page one:
It’s no one’s favorite villain, Overdrive! He’s back! Ready to… drive a car around at a character who travels through the air! Thrilling! He’s switched cars. I found out he was driving a Bugatti when I had to draw it awhile ago, now he’s driving a Something Or Other. I’m sure it’s based on a real car, but shout out to Siqueira for actually drawing it a few times and not just tracing pictures like everyone else does.
Is Vin Gonzales causing these crimes? How is he always there?? Almost 9 million people live in New York and Vin Gonzales is one of TWO COPS in the entire city!
Ok, this is more pages than I like to run in a row, but I just found out what Overdrive’s deal is–
–and boy, is that stupid. What, exactly, allowed him to remodel vehicles with a touch? This makes some of the more reach-y mutant powers look plausible. Good grief. Well, Spidey kicks into the bus, wondering how Overdrive does that (Me, too!), but Overdrive is waiting for him with… some kinda zap gun. It seems to distort Spider-Man and/or reality into some kind of wobbly field, but no one bothers to explain what happened to us. Spider-Man recovers and perches on top of the bus as Overdrive takes the wheel from the bus driver who was inexplicably still driving it? You didn’t think to stop the bus, buddy?? Spidey thinks last time he beat this idiot by making him drive his car off a bridge, and he obviously can’t do that this time, so he need a new plan.
I mean look at at that McFarlane head down there. You’re visibly better than this, Paulo!
Yeah, well, nobody said “the bomb” anymore by 2008, either, Marc Guggenheim. Well, now it’s time for Vin’s perspective on these events, written by Bob Gale, same art team. He starts at home, where he’s just overheard Peter on the phone talking about a job interview and found out he’s been hiding the fact that he got fired. As a true cop, he overreacts and becomes aggressive and threatening immediately. I wish I was joking. Then he leaves to take his dad to a baseball game, warning Peter not to go near the stadium. Or what, you’ll shoot him? Then we skip to Vin and his dad walking into the stadium when the fight drives by. His dad tells him to call 911, and Vin says, “I AM 911!” as he rushes out to shoot Spider-Man off-duty while his internal monologue says no one wears a mask unless they have something to hide. He’s a cop alright! He continues to narrate about how Spider-Man is evil as we see a clipped version of their encounter, then Spidey is off and wee see what Vin did after he left.
Am I not supposed to like Vin? I mean, I don’t, but I assumed I was supposed to. I assumed the tension between him being Peter’s roommate and Spider-Man’s biggest hater was going to be… a thing. But he just kinda sucks all around. We watch him flash his gun at the cabbie when he doesn’t want to drive down a one-way street the wrong way, and then they almost kill a guy, and then they finally catch up to Spider-Man on the bus.
Maybe Vin will grow as a person. I doubt it, but who knows? Internet sez ol’ Vin only appears in 34 comics, and we’ve seen 14 of them. Clock’s tickin’, Vinnie! Now it’s time for our 3rd perspective, and it Overdrive’s, naturally. It’s an hour after the events and he is being beaten up by Mr. Negative’s goons as he is forced to tell the story of how he failed Mr. N a second time. He stole that gun, which is a “sonic pulse generator,” for Mr. Negative, and did so in a monster truck, but he swapped it for the convertible in his escape. He also exaggerates how hard and dangerous it was to steal for his audiences’ benefit. He stole it from a small 2-man science operation, which I have to assume Mr. Negative very much already knows, but he tells him it was a heavily guarded high tech facility.
N-… nano-pimps? Good grief. Dexter Bennett just seems like a JJJ we don’t care about. Why have a new boss at the Bugle if it’s more or less the same character?
Oh word, Mr. Negative? You’ve heard enough? After 3/4 of a page of material Overdrive wasn’t present for? Well, anyway, he’s had enough of Overdrive, but his goons put him in the trunk of a limo to take him somewhere to kill, and he hijacks the car and flees. So then Negative wants his head goon to kill his other goons. So hard to find good goons anymore.
He’s just JJJ. New from the House of Ideas! How did this issue feel so long? My goodness. I’m reading these out of a (digital) collection, and the first volume ends with this issue, and then includes Executive Editor Tom Brevoort’s so-called manifesto for how Spider-Man should work. His first 5 points below could not be more correct. I wish Spider-Man editor 2018-2024 Nick Lowe had read this, but lemme tell ya, he clearly didn’t.
Hey, don’t I talk about good Spider-Man reading like Bugs Bunny? See, I know what I’m about. It’s a shame, tho, that they didn’t make the book feel like 1968 as opposed to 1974, which it has wound up feeling like. 68 would be way better. I think it’s funny he says to stop repeating the 3 great stories of the past and only names 2, but he’s not wrong there. If Tom thought Peter didn’t have enough friends pre-BND, he must be horrified by the book his company’s publishing today. Peter hasn’t even had a real job in 6 years, has no friends and no girlfriend. His life is nothing but Spider-Man and it sucks. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves.
The repeated placement of this in 2006 is interesting to me. Things happen, schedules change, Civil Wars end up running for 10 months instead of 7, but even so, this status quo not happening until the very end of 2007 doesn’t speak to a smooth transition. They sure did end up “just throwing a bunch of costumes” at us, despite Tom’s admonishment above. Not one classic villain in 18 issues of Brand New Day except the Enforcers, and they were kind of bit players in their story.
Good calls on mechanical webshooters and not bringing Gwen back. Bad call on doing a THIRD mystery goblin. Mr. Negative would’ve been a cool mystery villain if they hadn’t revealed him immediately. Who would’ve suspected Martin Li?
Feel like Tom’s idea for the personnel here didn’t work out too well. Not sure it would’ve been such a good idea to have artists drawing “their” bits and pieces of issues, that seems like it would telegraph things. Well, anyway. Tom’s ideas and rationales seem very solid and correct. So why is BND not very good? Why does it seem so retro if Tom explicitly didn’t want it to? I guess I’ll never know.
Well, the good news is, Bob Gale shall not darken this title’s doorstep again until ASM 600, and then not again until ASM 647. The bad news is, we’ll see him in a different capacity before ASM 600. A pretty odd one. But he’s more or less not a going concern anymore, so someone else is gonna need to join “the braintrust,” it would seem. Not the last time this happens, from what I understand. Eventually, they even cycle in a writer I like, which will hopefully be a nice change of pace.