The big first issue of the week is, of course, Infinite Crisis.  But I lost all interest in that project after trying to read a couple of issues of the lead-in miniseries, so I'll leave it to those who care.  Let me know if somebody rapes and immolates Sugar and Spike.

Marvel, meanwhile, have the first issue of Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, a book whose launch can best be described as baffling.  Although billed as a new title, this is basically a relaunch of Spectacular Spider-Man, which was canned earlier in the year so that they could have a new number #1.

The obvious question is why the world needs three different Spider-Man books.  The traditional answer is that they're all meant to have their own identities, something which has been taken to extremes over the last few years by publishing three monthly Spider-Man titles which seemed to exist on entirely separate universes from one another.  Marvel have now swung wildly in the opposite direction.  You might have thought that the new book should be establishing its own tone and identity in its first issue, but think again, because instead it's ploughing straight into "The Other", a twelve-part crossover which will keep it occupied for the first four issues.  There seems to be widespread agreement that this is an utterly horrid idea.

Now personally, if it was up to me, they'd just have one weekly Spider-Man title and get the creative teams to do rotating arcs on it.  (The same would go for the X-Men.)   Stories like "The Other" would make reasonable sense in that context.  In this format, though, you have to wonder what on earth Marvel are trying to achieve.  Launching a new book with a crossover is not entirely unprecedented - it happened quite a bit in the mid-nineties.  But those were savage times, not to be repeated.

Anyhow, what about the actual story?  Well, it's Peter David and Mike Wieringo doing Spider-Man, which always sounded promising and pretty much delivers.  Spider-Man runs into a new villain, Tracer, who's obnoxious and smart-mouthed, and outwits him at every turn.  Looks like a classic Peter David villain to me.  Meanwhile, Spider-Man gets to feel insecure and worried about his recent run of good luck, which has got to come to an end soon.

It's not in any sense a radical new take on the character, but it's a comic that plays to the traditional strengths of the concept with great skill.  It hits all the key points, and it's pretty much what most people will have been hoping for from a David/Wieringo Spider-man comic.  It bodes well for the long term, once this storyline is out of the way and David can get on with writing his own stories.

On the downside, the wider storyline has Morlun hanging around, a villain from the early days of J Michael Straczynski's run on the title.  Straczynski's pseudo-magical take on the character has always struck me as utterly misguided, and nothing I've read over the last few years has won me round on that.  I can't say I'm particularly looking forward to reading a storyline that returns to those themes, which is what the use of Morlun would seem to suggest.

But he's barely in this opening issue, which is really more about Spider-Man and Tracer (a storyline I rather suspect is going to be dealt with in David's issues while the wider crossover builds in the background).  As a comic in its own right, this is really rather good.  And it certainly makes me look forward to reading this title when it gets properly under way in four months time.  Shame about the ill-advised crossover idea - which unavoidably knocks the rating down a peg - but the book's virtues do shine through.

Rating: B+

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