A Comic A Day: Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #8

Published by Marvel
Written by Peter David
Art by Mike Wieringo

A common trope in any medium of stroytelling is that of the alternate dimension. The wrath of the evil twin. Something something Gemini, blah blah blah. The writer, in this case the always entertaining Peter David, asks a simple question of something essential to the character's origin. The notion is harmless until a story forms around it, then a script appears, an artist gives it life, and suddenly a horrifying new chapter in the saga of a superhero is set to begin. Reading this issue you expect Rod Sterling to walk on-panel and give a clever set up to the proceedings, but instead something even more intriguing happens: a fragment of this little alternate dimension finds its way to the "real" world.

That's the rub with Marvel comics, isn't it? Stan Lee and his cohorts in the early sixties imagined a fantasy that was not fantasy. It was the world outside your window plus superheroes. An interlocking collection of adventure serials that appealed to both the collector and the reader. Everything in early Marvel was on a need-to-know basis and boy howdy, did you ever need to know! And when a writer in any era of Marvel asks a dreaded "what if?" you need to know what and if.

Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man was born in 2006 out of Marvel's resurging faith in Spider-Man as a multi-title franchise following the success of his then current movie trilogy. Writer Peter David made a much anticipated return to a character that brought him some noteriety in the 80's thanks to the Sin Eater storyline. The status of the book upon its launch and first few sequential issues was shaky at best, thanks to the aformentioned "interlocking" nature of Marvel's material. The powers that be saw fit to launch a new title right smack in the middle of a sweeping multi-part crossover epic called The Other. David's first few issues are as sharply written as anything, but he doesn't really get going until issue five and the story I chose to highlight today doesn't really begin until issue eight.

This issue sees the events of the world famous and oft imitated Amazing Fantasy #15 turned on its proverbial head. A young, freshly irradiated Peter Parker returns home from a night of profiteering on his newfound "gifts" to a sight very familiar to fans of the character. Police cars and ambulances light up his neighborhood in Queens. Fans almost cringe at this point because they know what's next. Or do they?

Power and responsibility. The tragic lesson that shaped him is swept away. Instead of Uncle Ben's untimely murder we witness his dear old Aunt May bite it. Ben comforts Peter, who no doubt is crushed by his loss, but "power and responsibility" is never mentioned because unlike Ben's murder, Aunt May's fate really isn't Peter's fault. And thus, a very different Spider-Man is born. One who seeks to make a fortune off of his powers and talents, with his widowed uncle as a manager of sorts. This is only the beginning of a three part Spider-Man saga with ramifications that would be felt throughout Peter David's all too brief tenure on the book.

After seeing a very different Spider-Man in action for the reamainder of the issue, we are always witnessing the creation of a very different Uncle Ben. No longer the ghost on Peter's shoulder, Ben Parker is a living breathing perversion of the Spider-Man mythos. And almost as if aware of his grisly fate in the "real" Marvel timeline, he clings to life and even resorts to savagery in doing so. The end of this issue and the first act of the bigger story sees Ben "jump the tracks" so to speak, casually and quite unintentionally walking from their world to ours. He has a brush with the quite living Aunt May of our world and another new foe appears to cap things off.

This is a spectacular single issue that almost feels like a complete story, even with the cliffhanger ending. Peter David's Spider-Man work is great stuff and not near plentiful enough. Always worth your time and always willing to make you think as well as laugh, he's a comic book writer that deserves more attention, even after a long and successful career. His storytelling is a great power and he approaches it with a sense of responsibility that would make Uncle Ben proud.