Spider-Man Heroes & Villains Collection (UK) #44

Background

This is a 60-part weekly series being pumped into the market by Eaglemoss publications. They don't know much about Spidey, but they know that 60 * $8.99 = quite a lot. And I'm the kind of idiot who will spend that sort of money without doing the math.

There's an original 7-page story in every issue, and collectible trading cards too. Sure, the stories are terrible, the art has been 90% ghastly, and the price is far, far too high. But there's glossy paper, trading cards, and an original Spider-Man comic strip series that 99% of the U.S. collectors will never own!

Story 'Time Invaders'

Time Invaders!

What? Don't worry, I'm a bit confused too. But the story starts off relatively simply. You see... Spider-Man has just jumped through the mystical inter-dimensional portal that is in the attic of Oscorp Tower where Peter Parker lives with college pal Harry Osborn now that Harry's father Norman, aka the Green Goblin is in hospital after an accident involving the aforementioned mystic portal and the Sinister Six and Spider-Man, which also involved Electro, who subsequently captured Harry in order to interrogate him to find out where the Green Goblin went, except that Spider-Man then adopted the Green Goblin's costume in order to rescue Harry from Electro's capture which infuriated Electro so that when he merged with a Kree super-circuit chip that gave Electro hyper-powers, Harry was forced to jump through the portal in order to flee Electro's fury, and even though Electro subsequently lost those powers when the self-aware circuit chip had completed it's goal of being rescued, Harry was still lost in another dimension, forcing Spider-Man to seek him out. As mentioned above.

Trust me, the story so far isn't as interesting as it sounds.

But that's just the beginning. After sacrificing one of our seven story pages to a splash page, Spider-Man finds himself on the other side of a portal facing the "Invaders" from an earlier time, and an alternate reality.

The World War II super-team which faces our favorite web-slinger consists of Namor, Captain America, Professor Einstein, and Captain Kerosene (reserve member - Toro and the Human Torch were otherwise occupied).

Spider-Man battles the feisty Namor and Captain America, while Professor Einstein tries to work out what went wrong with his "time gate" - the device with which he had attempted to glimpse the future in order to assist with the war effort.

After an exchange of fists and wisecracks, Einstein figures out how to re-activate his newly-fledged portal in order to allow Spider-Man to leave... for places and worlds unknown...

General Comments

This is a crazy and pointless story, and a very funny one as well. Writer Glenn Dakin has excelled himself this time, it's hard to believe that this is the same guy who gave us so many issues of utter cra...

Oh, hang on. Sorry, my mistake. This story is written by guest scripter John Tomlinson. That explains why the plot is original and the dialog is hilarious. And really, it is all in the dialog - snappy one-liners abound. It's as I always say... it's not what you do, it's the way that you do it. And this is done well.

Overall Rating

This week's issue was an utter breath of fresh air. Sure, it was rather silly. But with luck, maybe Mr. Tomlinson will get the chance to write a serious story one day, and show if he's as versatile as he is amusing.

Until then, take these four webs.