Spider-Man: Blue


By Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-1071-2

In Spider-Man: Blue Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale set their nostalgia-filled sights on the beginning of Peter Parker’s tragically brief romance with Gwen Stacy, encompassing the transitional period when Steve Ditko’s creepy, plucky outsider grew into the wholesome, straight-shooting, hard-luck hero designed by John Romita Senior.

Reprinting the 6-issue miniseries from 2002, this slight if readable epic reconstitutes pertinent snippets from Amazing Spider-Man # 39-49, plus a smidgeon of #63, as, on a gloomy Valentine’s Day, happily married Peter records a message to a dead once-girlfriend he hasn’t really gotten over. In the form of a reminiscence of those days when he first emerged from his solitary shell, Parker recalls how he found – and lost – a few friends and inadvertently met his future wife Mary Jane, all whilst pursuing a pure, innocent and unlikely love with a seemingly unattainable dream…

Along the way he also fought a formidable array of super-foes, including The Green Goblin, the Rhino, the Lizard, two different Vultures and Kraven the Hunter, uncomfortably re-imagined here as the kind of sinister, brooding mastermind that he simply could not ever have been.

Sadly, there’s no real tension in the saga because even the newest readers already know the inevitable romantic outcomes whilst the attempt to weave a number of isolated super-baddie clashes into a vast master-plan over and above what Lee and Romita envisioned is clumsy and ill-considered. Don’t take my word for it: the original tales are readily available for your perusal and delectation in such sterling volumes as Essential Spider-Man volumes 2 and 3, as well as assorted Marvel Masterworks and collections, should you feel the need to contrast and compare…

Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale have a prodigious track record with simultaneously retrofitting, rationalising and re-examining the pivotal moments of many comic-book icons: especially distilling the key moments of iconic characters and careers into material palatable to modern readers, but here it’s simply a waste of their time. The originals are simply still better than the slow, shallow rehashing here.  This is not one of their better efforts, and often comes perilously close to being simply maudlin far too often for comfort.

Although Sale’s art is always a joy to behold, and Loeb’s gift for dialogue is undiminished Spider-Man: Blue falls short of their best. A solid, casual affair but not a patch on the real thing …

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