Radiant Comics

I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got one new comic plus a trade paperback collection:

And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

This volume of Spider-Man was a tough decision for me. I’ve generally liked the Dan Slott written Spideys that have come out but not the other writers’ stuff. Previous volumes have been all Slott or all whoever else they got writing Spidey. Not this one though. We get two Mark Waid, one Marc Guggenheim, one Roger Stern, and three Dan Slot issues.

Waid is a pretty good writer and I haven’t read and Spidey by him yet but his issues were drawn by Marcos Martin who’s artwork I’m not thrilled by. I’ve also liked Roger Stern’s writing in the past and his story was drawn by Lee Weeks. That’s a plus. Mike McKone drew the rest of the book but I don’t really have an opinion about his work one way or the other.

As I was weighing if I should buy this volume or not what put me over the top was the Shocker. He is one of the first Spider-Man villains I remember and though he was never very interesting nostalgia got the better of me. I loved in whatever Spider-Man issue that was all those years ago when the Shocker was blacking out whole city blocks just so he could spell out his name in skyscrapers when seen from above. That’s my crazy kind of villain.

But enough of my decision making process. The stories in this volume weren’t too bad. This book is like a random sampling of current Spider-Man issues. There is no big story line happening in here. We get one and two issue stories of Peter Parker living his life and Spider-Man battling a few low end villains. It was kind of refreshing not to have to read an “event” driven super hero comic.

So there is not much to say. There is a variety of writers and artists working on this comic but it all hangs together pretty well. Nothing spectacular but I’m glad I ended up buying it because it was an enjoyable read. Pick it up if you want a sampling of the talent that has been bringing us Spider-man lately.