Marvel Age: Spider-Man #1 (Story 2)

Background

This new series takes the classic Lee-Ditko Spider-Man stories and remakes them for people who don't know any better. The first issue, for reasons I can't determine, skips Spidey's origin from Amazing Fantasy #15 and the stories from Amazing Spider-Man #1 and instead begins with the Vulture and Terrible Tinkerer stories from Amazing Spider-Man #2.

Story 'The Uncanny Threat of the Terrible Tinkerer'

Peter shows his anti-magnetic inverter (which he has named "the Parkerizer") to his science teacher, Mr. Warren. A demonstration of the device accidentally erases the hard drive on Mr. Warren's PC. Pete takes it to the Tinkerer's repair shop where the Tinkerer inserts a spying device, which Pete finds almost as soon as he returns the PC to Mr. Warren. He goes back to the shop, finds a bunch of green aliens working in the basement, gets shot by the Tinkerer's mind scrambler but still manages to thwart an invasion from outer space.

General Comments

Read my review of Marvel Age Spider-Man #1 and you'll find out what I think of the general concept of this title. Basically, I really struggle to understand the point of it all. Despite that, there are some nice moments. I laughed at Peter naming his anti-magnetic inverter, the "Parkerizer". I appreciate that the original ending of the second story with the Tinkerer revealed as an alien is left intact. In that original Tinkerer story, Pete is sent by Mr. Warren to Professor Cobbwell and he is sent by the Prof to the repair shop to pick up a radio. Eliminating Cobbwell, changing the radio to a computer and making Peter the cause of the problem works very well, I think. (Except the Tinkerer had a reason to spy on a scientific big shot like Professor Cobbwell. Why would he want to spy on High School Science Teacher Warren?) But we've seen this kind of (dare I say it?) "tinkering" before in a little something called Spider-Man: Chapter One and we all know how well that series went over, don't we?

However, the best part of the second story, with Spidey escaping the Tinkerer's trap is completely eliminated. But, hey, at least in the current versions we get to see Spidey say things like "puke green". That makes the trade-off worthwhile, right? That makes it modern and cool and therefore better than the original, right? Well, no. Of course not.

Overall Rating

There might be some young Spiderfans out there who would enjoy this "hip & kewl" new version more than the original, but they're not reviewing the story - I am, and I'm offering one and a half webs, tops.