Spider-Man: The Other

Comic Review, Spider-Man: The Other. Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #1-4, Marvel Knights Spider-Man #19-22, and Amazing Spider-Man #525-528.

When I got back into comics, I wasn't really interested in my childhood favorite for one simple reason, I never had any idea who the villians were he was facing. My love of comics has always been based on my love villians, which I generally prefer to heroes, and Spider-Man had the best ones. After a few months of snubbing Spidey on my comic purchasing adventures, I heard about this big 12 part crossover and decided to give it a go while images of Maximum Carnage danced in my head. While a bit confusing, I really enjoyed the first time through and was excited to see if it stood the test of time.

It doesn't.

The Other suffers from many flaws, but the most fatal is the multiple writer approach. In the twelve part series, the ironic real-world based style writer, Peter David wrote the first three issues, Reginald, a black supremist, wrote the next three (what a surprise, he worked in a visit to Black Panther), and magical, mystical Michael Stryzenski takes the next three. They then rotate through the final three issues. The story is about Peter Parker, discovering that radiation in his blood from the spider bite that gave him his powers years ago, is going to kill him soon. He is then chased by Morlun, a god-totem seeker, hoping to devour his essence as he is a spider-totem. That is not any cooler than that sentence makes it sound.

Peter David writes a scattered story in the first issues that realistically make the point Spidey is going to die and takes way to long to do it. Even with keeping the authors the same across the crossover books, the artists change each issue, and each takes a completely different direction to the story whihc hurts it immensely. The artist on MK Spider-Man is just terrible by the way.

Hudlin takes over Spidey spends three isues going all over the place making peace with death, enjoying his last days, and hoping to find a cure. It fails and I got bored.

Stryzenski's writing is where the excitement happens, Spidey finally fights Morlun and dies, only to be reborn two issues later. The death of Spidey makes sense, the death of Morlun does not. Morlun survives ridiculous things in their fight, such as a several hundred foot fall into concrete, head-first. He dies when Spidey stabs him in the arms and chews on him a bit in a rabid near death state.

Spidey is reborn, after the necessary bullshit, "ah it's me in my subconcious while someone dark and morbid explains my life and the choices I make" dream like issue. He gains new powers that are ignored pretty much completely after this story ends, and they took them all away when Spidey got One More Dayed anyways, so completely pointless. The story is really over after 9 issues, the rest has the title for corssovers sake and we watch Spidey do random things that are just normal Spidey, while evey issue Stark runs tests on him concerning his powers, so I guess thats the tie-in? Things happen that do not make sense and are not resolved, probably because one writer thought it was brilliant and the next didn't care and the last three issues have absolutely no cohesiveness.

The eleventh issue ends with a close up of what appears to be some mysterious object that was tied to Spidey's rebirth, hinted at being a new threat.

There is no mention of it in issue twelve

In issue ten, Avengers tower is covered by spider, webs and it is never explained why. Nothing in the last three issues makes sense.

Overall, there were fun parts, but it would have been much better if they just made the story a year-long epic in just one of Spidey's comics. Too much pointlessness, and too many stupid ideas.

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