Spectacular Spider-Man #1 & 2
Review by Everest
Story:
Art:

Written by Paul Jenkins
Pencils by Humberto Ramos
Inks by Wayne Faucher
Lettering by Randy Gentile

Published by Marvel.
My verdict: Purchase this with money (it’s not worth sexual favors)

A New Beginning: Spider-Man is swinging around town doing his thing. A character we haven’t seen for a while, Eddie Brock, is hitting up a…confessional?! And someone, some "vampire," is killing people and leaving weird marks on the bodies, just above the kidneys.

There’s an underlying subplot going on with Aunt May and Liz Osborne trying to take care of Flash Thompson, indicating that this book is set in the same continuity as the rest of the Spider-Man books, so that’ll be tied up in future issues.

Spider-Man is trying to track down some weird tingling in his Spider-Sense when he discovers Venom, sans Eddie Brock, roughing up a couple of bums in a subway tunnel. The main focus of the story is the Spider-Man/Venom confrontation, but the background story of the police detective investigating these ‘vampire’ murders ties in almost immediately. I won’t go into how, but it’s an interesting piece of information about how an integral character to this story works.

Suffice to say that Spidey and Venom duke it out, all the while with the Brock-less Venom trying to make some sort of deal with Spider-man. Spidey doesn’t listen and isn’t playing ball, so after Spidey lets Venom take a header from an on-coming train, Venom goes back to find Eddie Brock, Eddie, the one who can provide at least some level of what Venom needs.

The Writing: Paul Jenkins is awesome. I hate Venom. I’ve never liked Venom. And I’ve always thought that the stories featuring him were among the weakest ever (not counting the clone debacle, which was worse), but Paul Jenkins has done something that no one else has been able to do--he made me interested in this story, and I’m itching to read the next issue. Venom is frightening. The writing is good.

The Art: I hate Humberto Ramos’ overly-stylized, anime and/or simian-inspired, cartoony art style. People’s heads are all kinds of strange shapes, ranging from broken eggs to T-Bone steaks, and he does things with Spider-Man’s anatomy that even Todd McFarlane could never have conceived of. I certainly can’t deny that Ramos has got a sense of cinematography; he chooses some great angles to tell this story and some of his panel layouts are just impressive. Unfortunately Aunt May, like many characters in this book, looks like a walking skeleton. Others look like monkeys--lots of monkeys; Spidey’s fingertips are often as big as his biceps, and his feet indicate that he’s from a planet with very heavy gravity. BUT Ramos draws the most sick, twisted, and amazing Venom I have ever seen. His Venom is creepy and downright scary: black ooze everywhere, seething, writhing, murderous. It’s fantastic.

In short, you should read this book. Why? Because it’s good enough to make me forget that I hate the villain who serves as the centerpiece of the story and that I can’t stand the artwork of the man who draws every single panel. This story is a great adventure for our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, and I think you ought to join all the cool kids and read