This month, Marvel Knights Spider-Man is suddenly Sensational Spider-Man. With the same numbering. 21st Century Marvel missing the opportunity for a new #1 is very surprising. Sensational Spider-Man starting at #23 seems much weirder. But I suppose I know why they did it. With a new name comes a new creative team. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa signs on as writer. How he got pretty high profile Marvel gigs at this time is a bit of a mystery to me. He was sold to the readers as a famous playwright, one of Bill Jemas’ last “anyone from a more respectable field” hires before he himself was fired. His first Marvel gig was Marvel Knights 4, the FF concept Jemas tried to force on Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo that led to the PR disaster of them being fired and rehired. After that, Jemas’ silly pet project became a separate title. But from what I’ve read, Aguirre-Sacasa was only just starting out in the theatre at the time, having had just 2 works produced. Not exactly hiring “TV’s Alan Heinberg.” But his first play was about Archie of Archie comics, and got hit with a cease & desist, and that probably got him on Marvel’s radar. He’s actually gone on to develop the Riverdale TV show and even be CCO of Archie Comics, he must be a huge fan. As he takes over this book, he’s still writing that 4 book, as well as a disastrously wrong-headed Nightcrawler series with a horror bent. I bought that series and didn’t enjoy it at all. I’m very nervous about this. Joining him is Angel Medina, last seen around these parts unfortunately being made to draw cyberspace nonsense in ASM 406. Since then, tho, he’s done work for Todd McFarlane, where he illustrated many issues of Spawn spinoff Sam & Twitch for a young writer called Brian Michael Bendis. How ‘bout that? Like seemingly everyone who did work for Todd McFarlane up to that point, he absorbed some of McFarlane’s rendering style. His already very cartoony art was a good fit with McFarlane’s, but he took it even further. He’s inked by Scott Hanna and colored by “Avalon’s Dan Kemp.” As with Matt Milla, I’m left to wonder if Kemp was owned by Avalon the whole time, or was recently acquired. Good or bad, Aguirre-Sacasa is going to see this title out, and Medina is on for over a year, so here’s hoping it’s good. I never read it before. I was, in fact, reading no Spider-Man but USM in this moment. Not only did the Other convince me to drop ASM, the next thing in ASM convinced me to keep it that way. For 3 more months, anyway. So all 3 mainline titles are new to me until cover date July 2006. 7 months not reading any of the main Spider-Man titles was a previously unthinkable record for me in 2006… I sat through Maximum Carnage and the clone era, hating every minute and buying them, anyway. This was a new, mature me, who didn’t keep buying a product he wasn’t interested in. And now look at me. Owning them anyway. What a fool. Well, anyway. Let’s see what the Spider-Man comics of an Archie lovin’ playwright are like. Oh, right, this issue’s rather unusual cover layout is due to it being a wraparound.
You can feel the McFarlane. But the Spider-Man also has that early Deodato “human sack of mashed potatoes” feeling. You may be wondering, if Spider-Man just got a fancy new suit, why’s he not wearing it? Well, that will eventually… sort of… make sense…
Very poetic. Regardless if his individual merits, Medina’s art feels very out of step with the Marvel ethos right now, a time when Steve McNiven, Olivier Coipel and Jim Cheung are the biggest artists in comics. Marvel didn’t really have a “house style” in the 2000s, but they did follow trends.
Guys, the prognosis is not good. Why do so many artists want the point on the inner sides of Spider-Man’s eyes to go down instead of up? Even Todd didn’t do that, but it becomes rampant in the 2000s, and still is. Later, at 5:30 in the morning, MJ finds Peter & May having coffee. May is her usual chipper self, but Peter is a zombie. Asked how he’s doing, he briefly flashes back to a hilariously brutal looking fight with the Vulture, as if that old man could take or dish out the massive hits Medina is rendering without shattering into a million pieces. Well, meanwhile, Curt Connors is working, when someone asks him to come “look at a rock” despite, you know, his field and all. Oh boy. Will Curt be the lunatic from Jenkins’ run, the actual Curt Connors, or something even worse?
What? Look, it doesn’t matter, and is gonna matter less and less very quickly, but since when is he a “part-time teacher?” Why is he a photographer again?
Humans only eat dead things, too, stupid! Oh man, this is not looking good.
Boy, Medina must’ve been flashing back to his Spawn days drawing this self-consciously grim-dark bullshit. Ugggh, meanwhile, John Jameson waits to see his dad at the Bugle. He’s got shaky hands and claws into his briefcase to steady them. Oh boy. MJ appears, seeing if Peter is around because she just finished her modeling gig. Which, you know, is something she doesn’t do anymore. Good grief. She remembers John, tho I’m pretty sure they’ve never met, and they make small talk.
What are we doing? And why’d they drop the “Marvel Knights” if this book is gonna be a bunch of edgelord nonsense, that seems much more at home under “Marvel Knights” than Sensational Spider-Man. Meanwhile, Peter is riding the subway, and his Spider Sense goes off, leading him to a hideously drawn child who’s snuck a puppy onto the train, which she says is “real sick.” He has no idea why that triggered his danger sense, but I think we can see where this is going by now. Later, MJ is answering a call from Peter, and taking it into another room to hear better over a news report of some guys attacking another guy with machetes. Christ alive, did I hit my head? Is it 1992 all of a sudden?
Every other comic: “MJ loves living in Avengers Tower!” This comic: “MJ HATES living in Avengers Tower!”
Whatever! Peter is on the phone with Curt Connors, who is turning into the Lizard and thinks he may have hurt someone. And while there’s only like 2 sentences before the change begins, I get the feeling this is the real Curt Connors, as in, “Not secretly in control of the Lizard the whole time because he’s an evil-to-the-bone psychopath” version Jenkins made up. He says Billy is with him. Spider-Man is rushing there as fast as he can, telling Curt to hold on, but come on, buddy, you know how this goes…
It’s not just the art giving flashbacks to McFarlane’s Torment, you know? A choppy story where people are out of character and it’s trying so hard to be daaaaark. Oh boy oh boy.