Spider-Man 2: Hurry Up, Spider-Man

Background

We've already covered plenty of HarperCollins kid's books that were released to tie-in with the movie. All the ones we've covered so far had a couple of things in common - firstly, they were standard bookshelf sort of size, 5" x 7.5" or so. Also, they were all simultaneously released throughout the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.

However, there were two other kids books that appear to have been released only in the United States - these two books here, entitled "Hands Off, Doc Ock!" & "Hurry Up, Spider-Man". Both are apparently designed for reading to young kids, and they feature a larger 8" x 8" profile which allows for much larger pictures on each page.

The word count is quite similar to two of the other Festival books, as reviewed in Spider-Man 2: Spider-Man vs. Doc Ock and Spider-Man 2: Everyday Hero. They all feature two or three lines of text per page, up to five lines max, but are predominantly driven by the pictures. However, this time we have only 16 pages per book, instead of the 32 pages in the other two books just mentioned.

Story Details

This book is completely different from it's twin, Spider-Man 2: Hands Off, Doc Ock!. While they share the same layout, page count, profile, word count etc, the story and art are entirely different. This story is about Peter being late for everything - including his own birthday party! That's because he's Spider-Man!

Spidey rescues a red-head girl (who looks just like MJ) from a mugger. But it wasn't MJ, because Peter talks to his blond-headed friend Mary Jane and gets invited to her show. "Don't disappoint me, she says!" Peter buys flowers, and heads off on his scooter. Peter sees some bank-robbers speeding in a convertable, although in this version they don't run over his bike - because Peter is riding his bike on the sidewalk!

Peter has to stop and rescue a houng boy, and does his "eat your vegetables" spiel. He webs up the police car that is flying towards people, just like in the film. He gets the villains, and webs 'em up. He misses the show. MJ was mad, she "pretended she didn't like Peter anymore. She left the theater with someone else!" Ooops.

Peter hoped he'd have a chance to make it up to her... but he knew one thing. With great power, yadda yadda.

General Comments

I shipped this book in from the U.S. because I had to review it for the Spidey page. I'm sure glad I didn't buy them just on the off-chance that they were actually any good!

The story takes a fragment of the movie that involves some complex character interaction, makes some pointless changes like swapping MJ's hair color, and reproduces it rather out of context.

Production values are high, but that fails to compensate for the fundamentally flawed script.

Overall Rating

Same poor rating as its companion story, but for different reasons. One point five webs.