Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale form one of my all-time favorite writer/artist teams in comic books, and in SPIDER-MAN: BLUE, they revisit one of the best eras in the history of Spider-Man, taking the stories that appeared in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #39 – 49 and retelling them in a six-issue mini-series that focuses on the budding romance of Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy. And of course this is also the time period when Mary Jane Watson, who would turn out to be the love of Peter's life, was introduced. Along the way there are battles with several iconic villains: the Green Goblin, the Rhino, the Lizard, two (count 'em, two) Vultures, and Kraven the Hunter. This was great stuff then, and it's still great stuff now (2002, actually, when the Loeb/Sale mini-series originally appeared, although I just read it in a new trade paperback reprint). Reading it made me feel like I was back there reading those stories for the first time. A lot of the panels are tributes to the original art by John Romita Sr., and Loeb uses some of the dialogue that Stan Lee wrote back then, including the immortal "Face it, tiger . . . you just hit the jackpot."
Yeah, I'm probably overreacting because of a rush of nostalgia, but I really enjoyed SPIDER-MAN: BLUE. It's good to feel like a kid again, if only for a little while.
2 comments:
Any nostalgia about comics is always welcome. Personally, I prefer the early Spider-Man comics, both story and look wise.
I'cut way back on buying trade comic editions, but you've really tempted me with this one.
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