Peter Parker's adolescent struggles with great responsibility are tremendously compelling in this new revision. They're just as compelling as Stan Lee's original, if not more. Or at least modernized. This one does a fantastic job at drawing the Venom storyline, originally birthed from an extraterrestrial trip during Secret Wars in the original, into Peter Parker's family and heartwrenching past. And troubling future.

Peter Parker is the archetype for a compelling, reluctant yet exuberant superhero.

Great storytelling and excellent art. ( )

Young Spidey is having it tough. His aunt has some old videotapes of his parents, and he finds one with Eddie Brock on it, a friend of his when he was a young kid.

He goes and talks to him, and finds out he has some of the parental research going.

Hey presto, crazy dna venom-suit. Spidey doesn't keep it long as he almost kills someone.

Eddie, who he finds out via Gwen is really a 'dirtbag' as she put it, is not quite so picky.

http://graphicsf.blogspot.com/2007/01... ( )

The sixth compilation of the excellent re-telling of Spider-Man's beginnings. Here, Doc Connors uses Peter Parker's genetically altered blood, and his own altered blood, in a science project that inadvertently creates a hostile mindless being (aka Carnage in the original telling), who ultimately kills Gwen Stacy in a grisly fashion. Peter learns the creature's origins and manages to destroy it, and resolves afterward to give up being Spider-Man. It takes a meeting with Johnny Storm, the Torch, an unabashed Spidey fan here, to turn his head around. There is also a highly entertaining story here wherein Peter Parker and Wolverine's psyches are switched with the others' body. Still fine art here, and great writing, especially as regards Peter's relationship with Mary Jane, and an interaction with Mary Jane and Gwen before her untimely (and ill-advised) death. The final story is a bit of a bummer; just as Peter and Mary Jane are about to embark on a long over-due fancy date, he is sucked into a possession nightmare of Doctor Strange, where his frequent doubts about the impact of his activities upon his loved ones and their safety is horribly fanned into full flame, and he is left shivering and quaking in his cellar as a bewildered Mary Jane waits for him to go on their fancy date. Great stories, with a downer to finish up with. ( )