By Mark Millar, Terry & Rachel Dodson with Frank Cho (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851- 5640-6
Outcast, orphaned science-nerd schoolboy Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider and, after seeking to cash-in on the astonishing abilities he subsequently developed, suffered an irreconcilable personal tragedy. His beloved guardian Uncle Ben was murdered by a burglar Peter could have stopped but didn’t because he didn’t want to get involved.
Feeling irreconcilably responsible for the tragedy and permanently traumatised by Ben’s death, the 15-year old determined henceforward to always use his powers to help those in need.
For years the brilliant, indomitable everyman hero suffered privation and travail in his domestic situation whilst his notorious alter ego endured public condemnation and mistrust as he valiantly battled all manner of threat and foe.
Parker has loved and lost many more close friends and family during his crime-busting, world-saving career, but eventually won a measure of joy from all the heartache when he married the girl next door: Mary Jane Watson…
During his perpetual crusade for the ordinary underdog, the guilt-ridden, unlikely champion faced many uncanny, bizarre and inexplicable menaces but none more determined and dangerous than Norman Osborn, father of Peter’s best friend Harry and a brilliant, utterly insane scientist who sought power as the malignly Machiavellian Green Goblin.
Early on the elder Osborn had uncovered the Web-spinner’s true identity and subsequently tormented his adversary with the fact ever since. Even after he murdered Peter’s fiancée Gwen Stacy and apparently died in the bitter retaliation, Osborn kept the precious secret to himself, extracting every iota of psychological pressure he could from the morally-handcuffed hero…
Following a catastrophic bankruptcy scare – both money and ideas – in the late 1990s, Marvel returned reinvigorated and began refitting/retooling all their core character properties. In 1999 the expansive Spider-Man franchise was trimmed down and relaunched as two new titles – Amazing Spider-Man and Peter Parker: Spiderman and the constricting, fad-chasing policy of mindlessly chasing sales at any cost was replaced by a measured concentration on solid, character-based storytelling and strong art.
In 2004 the franchise expanded again as the Marvel Knights imprint (a notional subset of the over-arching continuity concerned with stronger, edgier, more mature themes where the heroes “populate and guard the dark corners of the Marvel Universeâ€) began its own Marvel Knights Spider-Man, offering canonical in-continuity sagas to entice older, presumably more jaded readers.
The first year featured an extended saga written by fan-favourite Mark Millar and mostly illustrated by the sublimely beguiling Terry & Rachel Dodson, which spectacularly capitalised on the dark potential of the Osborn situation…
Gathering the entire epic – previously published as three smaller trade paperbacks -Â this titanic tome offers the entire astounding 12-issue tale (running from June 2004 to May 2005) of a family in crisis in one blistering burst, sub-divided into a triptych of interlinked episodes.
It all begins with ‘Down Among the Dead Men’ as, following another cataclysmic clash with the Green Goblin, the wall-crawler at last succeeds in exposing the maniac and sending Norman Osborn to prison. Battered and bruised, Peter Parker returns to Mary Jane just in time to help move Aunt May into her new apartment, before heading off to his day job as a High School science teacher.
The first inkling of trouble comes when he receives a call: someone has desecrated Uncle Ben’s gravestone…
The next phone call is worse: a mysterious voice reveals it knows his secret and tells Peter he’ll never see Aunt May again…
With the frail widow kidnapped Peter realises his wife could be next and, over her objections, packs Mary Jane off to relative safety in another city before contacting ex-girlfriend and semi-retired super-thief Black Cat for help…
Even though he has fought untold hundreds of thugs and masterminds there’s only one real suspect and soon Spider-Man has broken into the maximum security prison where a smug Osborn callously mocks him whilst feigning utter innocence. The villain is playing mind games and reveals he has shared their secret. Now as payback for having the temerity to have the once-respected businessman arrested and publicly shamed, all Parker’s loved ones will suffer…
After an ill-tempered discussion with the Avengers which results in absolutely nothing productive, the frantic arachnid goes looking for answers in all the wrong places, engaging in a Faustian bargain with resurgent crime-lord The Owl. This aging miscreant is slowly easing himself back into the underworld hierarchy following the recent bloody fall of the crime Kingpin Wilson Fisk, and is happy to make a deal…
In return for a future favour the gangster reveals former foes Electro and the Vulture were responsible for the abduction of a certain little old lady, but by the time a fighting mad, out of control Spider-Man has found, fought and finished with them, the wall-crawler realises he’s been played for a fool and the crafty old bird bandit has simply used him to punish two employees who stole $20 million from their new boss…
The battle quickly escalates out of all control and as Spider-Man realises he’s been had, Electro fries the hero and kicks him off a skyscraper roof…
When Mary Jane sees on TV that her barely alive husband is in the Intensive Care Unit, she picks up a gun and turns back for New York City…
Before she can get there, however, the Vulture breaks in, hungrier than ever for a pound of flesh. The aged maniac had intended to do the only decent deed of his life with the stolen cash and his old enemy has spoiled it. Now he was planning a grotesquely memorable revenge but hadn’t reckoned on a savagely protective Black Cat guarding the broken hero…
Spider-Man’s troubles were only beginning, however, as unbeknownst to anyone a nurse had taken pictures of the face under the mask and offered them to the Daily Bugle’s gadfly publisher J. Jonah Jameson…
As Parker’s astonishing powers of recuperation pulled him back from death’s door, many disparate strands were slowly knitting together in the second story arc ‘Venomous’ (with additional art from Frank Cho) as deadly psychopath Eddie Brock returned to the Big Apple intent on auctioning off the alien Symbiote which enabled him to be a bigger, stronger, deadlier web-spinner…
Due to financial reversals Peter and Mary Jane are on the verge of bankruptcy, but young Mrs. Parker has bigger worries. Even with the ever-present threat to her life from May’s mysterious abductor, all she can think about is how much better-suited Black Cat Felicia Hardy is to a life with Spider-Man…
At least the photos of the arachnid hero in his hospital bed prove to be a huge flop since Peter’s face was so badly beaten as to be unrecognisable. However now the Daily Bugle is offering a $5 million reward to anyone who can positively identify the wall-crawler…
When Doctor Octopus goes on a strangely mindless rampage, Spider-Man suspects that someone has brainwashed his arch-enemy, but after the madman is finally subdued the police SWAT teams abruptly turn on the web-spinner, in a concerted effort to win the Bugle’s bounty. Only the intervention of an honest cop prevents Parker’s total exposure…
Jameson meanwhile is plagued by a host of crazies claiming the reward with every stupid stunt imaginable, and another clandestine meeting with the incarcerated Osborn only makes Spider-Man more scared and desperate. With nothing left to lose, the arachnid visits the X-Men where their resident telepath Rachel Summers psi-scans for the missing widow and, unable to detect her, comes to the chilling conclusion that she must be dead…
In a hidden hideaway the underworld auction is well under way and soon the Venom Symbiote has a new host…
In the course of his searches Spider-Man has discovered that the Vulture had not been lying. The villain was stealing to pay for an experimental treatment for a boy dying of cancer: a kid completely innocent, oblivious to the villain’s crimes and the son of someone the wall-crawler owes…
Life rolls mercilessly on. Peter now teaches science at his old High School and during a class reunion the next turn of the screw occurs when the party is crashed by a new Venom who’s been told he can hurt Spider-Man by attacking a guy named Parker…
Ruthlessly slaughtering those witnesses unfortunate enough to talking over old times with the nerd they used to bully, the metamorphic monster soon has the frantically resisting Peter on the ropes; even briefly believing he has slain the web-spinner until the Symbiote inexplicably abandons its new owner in mid-air…
Miraculously victorious, Parker determines to end the Bugle’s bounty hunt by faking evidence of Spider-Man’s true identity – the one person in the world Jameson would protect rather than gloatingly expose – and discovers the money was donated by a mystery donor.
When the publisher forces him to accept $500, 000 as hush money, the guilty, conflicted but desperately cash-strapped Peter accepts.
In the end however, he cannot keep it, and finds a suitably worthy cause to donate it to… and that’s just when the kidnapper calls again and offers to meet the harassed hero for lunch…
The saga hurtles to a blistering tension-filled climax in ‘The Last Stand’ as the enigmatic tormentor is revealed as a B-Lister from Spider-Man’s extensive Rogue’s Gallery, but one working under explicit, pre-prepared instructions from Norman Osborn.
He also reveals a vast criminal conspiracy that has governed much of American society since the end of World War II, expending vast amounts of time, money and resources keeping the relatively uncontrollable, incorruptible super-hero population occupied and distracted whilst they covertly carry on running the country.
Discretion and secrecy are their greatest assets and Osborn was one of them. Moreover – now that he’s made the cardinal error of being caught – the billionaire businessman needs to be sprung from jail before his former colleagues take the usual steps to ensure their continued peace and profitable security…
They’ve already made Otto Octavius into their highly visible, utterly untraceable, plausibly deniable tool. The completely mind-wiped maniac is a human weapon just ready to fire at the helpless Green Goblin, and unless Spider-Man frees his arch-foe immediately, May Parker will finally truly die…
Knowing he’s being played and well aware that it might be for the last time, Peter says goodbye to Mary Jane and with Black Cat breaks into Riker’s Island Penitentiary to free the most evil man alive…
Of course it’s a trap and the Goblin double-crosses him as soon as they’re clear: unleashing old enemies Vulture, Electro, Sandman, Boomerang, Chameleon, Hydro–Man, the Lizard, Hammerhead, Tombstone and the Shocker on the web-spinner and his companion as soon as he’s free.
At least that was the plan, but his most faithful minion has been unexpectedly possessed by the Symbiote – turning him into a most unpredictable and uncontrollable incarnation of Venom – and even as Osborn flies off to murder the beloved wife of his ultimate nemesis, the Avengers, Fantastic Four and Daredevil all show up to tackle the Sinister Twelve, leaving Parker to pursue in the most terrifying and important chase of his life…
When Venom suddenly attacks, the infuriated Parker is unstoppable, and easily overcomes his tormentor, but it’s too late. By the time he reaches their home MJ and Osborn are gone, headed to the same bridge where the Goblin killed Peter’s first love Gwen.
Moreover the maniac boasts that May is still alive but hidden in the last place Parker would look with only a half hour of air…
History looks certain to be repeated but both adversaries have forgotten the berserker Doctor Octopus and his deep-programmed mission of murder…
Stylish, powerful, suspenseful and utterly absorbing, this is a truly epic adventure of everybody’s favourite bug-based hero, beautifully illustrated and so smartly written that any new or long-lost reader can extract the maximum enjoyment with the minimum confusion.
In case you’re wondering: Marvel Knights Spider-Man rejoined the mainstream when it was re-titled Sensational Spider-Man with #23 so if continuity is your thing it even actually happened (at least in the sense that us comics zombies understand…) so there’s absolutely no reason not to acquaint yourself with this spectacular slice of Fights ‘n’ Tights wonderment.
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