Review author: Mike Murray, owner/operator of MyComicStore.net

Spider-man: The World's Greatest Hero trade paperback

Stern, Defalco, Moore, De La Torre, Barberi, and Scott are all named on the cover and there were plenty more people that worked on this collection of anniversary issues. Picking up where the various past Spider-man story lines left off, this volume collects Peter Parker, Spider-man #156.1, Sensational Spider-man #33.1 and #33.2, and Web of Spider-man #129.1 and #129.2, and these are five comics that never needed to be made. The best part of this whole book is that beautiful cover illustration by Mike McKone.

These were nonsensical stories that didn’t further or enhance the Spider-man story at all. Although I did enjoy that one of the stories referenced events from circa Amazing Spider-man #235. That era was from early in my joy of all that is comics and Spider-man in particular.

I found the whole thing rather depressing. Spider-man is so much more than this and anyone who buys this book looking for “The world’s greatest super hero” is instead going to find a very unfunny joke. That’s really too bad because Spider-man, in spite of being 50 years old this year, really is the world’s greatest super hero!