Spider-Man: Chapter One #3

Background

Someone at Marvel came up with the idea of revamping the first eighteen issues of the Amazing Spider-Man and gave the project to "Retcon" John Byrne to play with. Don't ask me why.

Story 'First Fall'

Byrne has combined the two stories in Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. I) #2 into one, and while this issue starts off with Spidey in a water tower, we quickly flash back to him whuppin' on the Tinkerer's "alien" bad guys. He wins, only this time fails to rip off the Tinkerer's mask and the fake aliens (Quentin "Don't Call Me Quenty" Beck, a.k.a. Mysterio, among them) escape. The next day, the Vulture is causing havoc and Spidey gets the idea to take pictures of him for a newspaper. Vulchy, however, is a little better at the fighting game than Petey and dumps him in the aforementioned water tower. He gets away and sells his first pictures to Jolly Jonah Jameson. Later, he checks on one of the Tinkerer-repaired radios which gives him an idea to defeat the Vulture. He invents a little device that cancels out the electromagnetic fields that the Vulture's been using to fly (the devices that the Tinkerer put in all the radios apparently gave him that ability) and is surprised that Vulchy turns out to be human. But a superhero's work is never done, apparently, since Jonah sends him out to get a picture of Doctor Octopus, who's sealed himself in some sort of industrial complex. And as before, Spidey is a little overconfident when he tackles Doc Ock and gets his butt soundly whumped. Could this be the end of Spider-Man???

General Comments

Where does one begin?

Okay, show of hands, how many of you dropped money on Gus Van Sant's remake of "Psycho?" Anyone? I never saw it, but I remember reading the reviews and thinking that Van Sant was screwed at every turn. If he made any major changes, he'd have a legion of film fans crying for his head. If he didn't really change anything, which I guess is what happened, the question would be raised: why bother remaking it in the first place? You see what I'm getting at here? The situation's the same for Byrne and "Chapter One;" he can't change things too much and he's got to change a few things to make it worth the $2.50 plus tax. As such, he's been trying to walk a fine line and in my humble opinion he fell off long before issue #3.

So the Vulture couldn't fly without the devices in the Tinkerer's radios, huh? How's this one going to be explained away? The Tinkerer was working with Vulchy--what's he getting out of it? Oooh, and Peter's now scanning the Internet while admiring Flash's cool earring. Gimme a break.

Overall Rating

Lame, lame, lame. One tragic web.