I need to preference this review with a little personal history. In the late 90’s I bought all the 80’s run of Spider-man from my english teacher, Mr. Head (in retrospect I should have bought is 80’s run of X-men as well) and I loved the single Peter Parker. This issue of Spider-man had all of the resonance of the Roger Stern run of Spidey.

On the story, it had everything I want in a good Spidey story. Dan Slott wrote some great Peter Parker moments, work problems with Dexter Bennet the new Editor in Chief of The Daily Bugle. Great Daily Bugle moments with Joe Robbie Robertson. , and I won’t spoil what happens but I suspect that there will be ramifications of this, and J.Jonah Jameson who I suspect will not be sitting in the background for too long.

It had a great villain, in a great villain story you want back story and you want to in some respects be rooting (which in Australia where I hail from means something completely different, and with any Aussies reading this review I do not mean i in that context) for the villain and the hero respectively.
This Story also had me doing something I have not done in quite a while with Spider-man comics, I fell in love with Mary Jane Watson. I want more of this new MJ. This was the MJ of the Stan Lee, John Romita Sr run, before the aspects of her childhood surfaced (which I hope has also had a One More Day style retcon).

Now for the art. Everyone that I have talked to about this issue is gushing over the art. I’ll just tell you I agree with them, my favourite spidey artists are Ditko, Romita Sr and Jr, Ron Frenz (prior to his Thor run where became a Kirby clone, although it can be argued that he was a Ditko clone when he was working with Stern in the 80’s) and now Marcos Martin.

I’m going to post this review as having no spoilers, and I apologise if there are. I have tried to keep it deliberately vague for this reason. Hope you all loved this issue as much as I do. Now onto the Spider-murderer storyline.