Sensational Spider-Man (Vol. 2) #36

Story Details

We start with Peter fighting a mutating Spider-Man, relating back to the last issue. Spidey tells the mutant that he is dying and that he should come with him. At Curt Connors' place, Spidey has taken the imposter and Curt is working on a cure. Spider-Man says he will help round up all the other kids infected.

Over at the police precinct, a bunch of Spider-Man wannabes all with similar abduction stories – and hand-delivered by the real Spidey - are locked up. Each have different costumes from Spider-Man's past, including – among others - the regular red 'n' blues, the black variant, the scarlet costume and the Iron Spider one. Curt Connors arrives to help them. Some of them say they would rather keep evolving, however.

Meanwhile, Jordan is locked up somewhere in a small room. He is trying to break a large two-way mirror to escape.

Peter is having a secret meeting with Mr Fantastic. Reed tells him there was a tracker fitted inside Ethan, the kid Peter left with him in the last issue. Peter goes off to try to discover where the tracer comes from after getting a tip from Reed that he found traces of dust from the subway tunnels under NYC.

Zabo spots him on his monitors. He seems obsessed with Peter Parker and desperate to understand why, as a 15-year-old, Peter did so much good with his powers instead of using them for his own aims. He has been sending the kids out on to the streets as an experiment to see how they will react.

General Comments

First off, there is another lovely Clayton Crain cover on this issue. I really wish he'd be given a full run to draw the character.

This issue doesn't flow quite as nicely as the previous one. The scene in the precinct with all the historical Spider costumes was pretty cool - but this hasn't really pushed the story forward a lot further than the previous issue.

Basically, all that's happened is that Peter is now close to discovering Hyde. We already knew Jordan had been taken. We already knew Hyde was experimenting on kids and we already knew Peter was in contact with Reed Richards. This issue just re-enforces all that, adding very little.

It's not a bad read, it just seems we've waited a month and, well, the story is pretty much in the same place it was before.

Ramon Bachs – who worked on the recent Civil War Frontline series – does a pretty decent job in his Spidey debut. He certainly has a grasp on all the various Spider-Man costumes and continues the slightly cartoony art that Medina brought to the book.

Overall Rating

Not bad but there's not much payoff – or advancement – the story. I'm looking forward to the concluding part, however.