Spider-Man Marvel Adventures #13

Background

This Spider-Man is different than you remember. It is targeted towards kids, and has a slightly different continuity and background to the hero than the one that we all remember. Still, the important things here are that Peter Parker is still Spidey, he lives with his Aunt May, and he is 15 years old. Also, Spidey’s name tops the book’s header, so, in this fashion we know it’s still all about him — as a teen in the modern-day world.

Story Details

Spider-Man is over in England, only it isn’t so merry, as our intrepid hero is wandering through the English countryside being stalked by a real Saber Tooth Tiger. Fortunately for Spidey, the tiger is Zabu, faithful companion to Ka-Zar, only Spidey doesn’t know that at the time. Zazu chases Spidey for a bit until Ka-Zar shows up and explains that he’s one of the good guys, and that Zabu is with him.

This done, Spidey tells Ka-Zar about he (as Peter) along with Aunt May traveled to England with a small adventure society, playing detective, They heard stories of dinosaurs out on the moors so Pete split off from the group, changed into Spidey, and went to look for the dinos. Here, Ka-Zar jumps in to tell how someone was kidnapping dinosaurs from the Savage land and transporting them to England, where Kazu followed them. Now the two heroes team up to find them. As they set off they happen across the kids who what to take pictures of the two heroes.

Eventually the pair slips away and locates the dinos that are being held by men in special suits with blasters and a team of guard dogs. Spidey, Kazar, and Zabu set on the villains discovering the trapped dinosaurs underground in cages, It is there that they find the man behind the scheme and his top henchman, Sabretooth, who attacks Spidey. As Spidey fights off the feral mutant, Kazar and Zabu free the dinosaurs, The combined onslaught not only frees the captive beasts but captures the bad guys as well.

General Comments

This series has been re-booted so many times that I’m no longer sure if Spidey and Ka-Zar have already met (I thought that they had, which proved to be somewhat confusing to me. Still, given that I’m probably the only person who has actually read all of the issues in the series, I’m probably the only one who would have noticed.

Overall Rating

A fairly generic story that stretches what little credibility of this series by moving Pete & Aunt May to England just to tell this story.

Footnote

Nothing exciting happening here: move along to the next issue.