A bit of back-story for those who aren't familiar with the past year of Spider-man comics. In Amazing Spider-man #700, longtime Spider-man foe, Dr. Octopus switched brains with Spider-man and subsequently killed Parker off in his former body. After Parker's death, Otto decided to redeem himself and become a hero as the new Spider-man- the superior Spider-man. The Amazing Spider-man- a comic series that had been running for 50 years- was cancelled and Otto got his own title, The Superior Spider-man.
While the initial notion of the iconic hero being killed off and replaced by a megalomaniac turned fans off, readers ended up loving Dr. Octopus as the wall-crawler, providing a darker, more brutal and scientific take on Spider-man. It was a great run, but with a new Spider-man movie coming, Marvel knew it had to make sure Peter was around for the movie, so to coincide with the release, they resurrected Peter and killed of Otto, so that Peter Parker could triumphantly return in his body in the relaunched Amazing Spider-man.
What was the point of this? Well, as each movie is released, more and more viewers are interested in reading the actual comics. But any interest would be squashed immediately after hearing the complex story lines involving Peter being dead and Spider-man being Dr. Octopus. It's too confusing for any new reader. New readers needed to see the Spider-man they were familiar with. And it makes sense for the series to be relaunched as #1, rather than #701, because the prospect of catching up on 700 issues would also turn off potential readers. So thus, the Amazing Spider-man #1 is here. Whew. That was a lot of catching up to do.
But now onto the main review. After a year of seeing Dr. Octopus bring a darker story to the Spider-man mythos, the return to the lighter and more comical world of Peter Parker is refreshing and brings in the right amount of nostalgia for the old days of Peter and brand new stories that makes this issue a very enjoyable read. It reminds us how fun Spider-man comics can be and why Peter Parker is the true Spider-man.
Recent continuity isn't ignored though, with frequent references to Otto's reign shadowing the story, as Peter must now fix the damage done to his personal life by the villain. His world is turned upside down and the process of rebuilding it makes for a very interesting story. However, the abundant references to Otto's series defeat the purpose of this issue for being accessible to new readers, but this is a small price to pay if we get an interesting fallout from the Superior era.
In terms of conflict, there is no real villain here, just Spidey going around and stopping thugs in his trademark manner. This however, helps serve the issue as it allows for a gentle transition from Superior to Amazing. Any additional content would burden the issue, as it is just meant to be a reintroduction to Peter. It does what it meant to do and pulls it off beautifully.
One could say the entire purpose of Superior Spider-man was to re-inject interest in Spider-man, whose comics had been going stale through 50 years of the same old Peter Parker stories. By shaking up the story with a new take on the character, the character was interesting again. And then the Amazing Spider-man #1 returned us back to Peter and made us appreciate his character again. This issue was a breath of fresh air and the comics are exciting. Things are looking up for the world's greatest hero again.
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