The new/old Spider-Man
I will always have fond memories of reading Spider-Man. He's probably one of the first comic book hero that captured my atention 17 years ago, when I started reading Marvel comic books. Peter Parker was a different hero, not only because of his sense of responsability, but because every writer of the 60s, 70s and 80s knew how to fit him in a context of fun and adventure action stories. He never got a break, his luck was often against him and yet, no matter how deep or hard his personal problem as Peter was, he always managed to dig in his inner strenght to overcome his fears and situations in battles. Not only Spider-Man was a terrific hero, he had awesome enemies. Then, enters the 90s, Todd MacFarlane was very good,Erik Larsen too,but when Tom Defalco and cia, after the whole Clone Saga, decided to bring back Norman Osborn and Aunt May back from the dead, I knew instantly that the character had lost it's interest to me, so I decided to abandon the franchise. For several years I was contempt to only watch Spider-Man in the Avengers, not looking anymore for his solo series. From the exception of Stracynski and Deodato run, which wasn't this great by the way, I was totaly in the dark of what was happening to this amazing hero: haven't follow the Quesada run and haven't read Slott's stories also. After the announcement of Amazing Spider-Man # 700 big changes, I decided, for curiousity, to look once again what the fuzz was all about. Superior Spider-Man, the first two issues, were definitely something very different from what I was expecting and, call me nostalgic, but Dan Slott managed to bring back several traits and specifics from Spidey's golden area: the Sinister Six, the Vulture, Mary Jane as a foxy lady, charming and sexy. Also,the new personality of Spider-Man developing scientific experiments to aid his criminal fighting was excellent and a very intelligent way to aproach this new phase. I'm not interested when Peter is coming back, I believe the fact he's still there, even managing a "dialogue" with Otto, was fun and definitely a creative way to boost the character. Slott delivered two amazing issues with adventure, action, funny dialogues, interesting interactions between Spider-Man and Mary Jane, evolving aspects of the plot (like Carlie starting to get the big picture about Spider's situation, Peter struggling to make Otto do the right thing) and especially enjoyed seeing Otto in charge of Spider-Man: his persona is still dominant, but his conditioning (or domestication) by Peter's persona was very creative and new. Ryan Stegman did a terrific issue, optimizing Spider moves and pencilling great scenes. Marvel really surprised me with this decision and the fact that the mail section had more negative opinions than positive just shows that they weren't trying just to cover up: people have their reasons to be unsatisfied,but honestly I really think this new Spider-Man really came in a good time.
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