Spider-Man: Mutant Agenda #0

Background

This issue is not like a normal comic. Upon opening it I found that most of the pages consisted of two vertical, blank panels with only a date inside each to tell them apart. Apparently this book was created as sort of a scrap book where people could clip the Amazing Spider-Man newspaper strips and glue them inside. When the run is finished they would have a nice album of all the strips that made up the Mutant Agenda storyline.

Story Details

Besides the pages that make up the newspaper strip album, there is also a retelling of Spider-Man's origin, which we have all read countless times, except here it is retold in newsprint form. They reprinted the Origin of Amazing Spider-Man strip here in it's entirety.

Besides the Origin strip and scrap book pages they have four pin-ups that deal with the current stories taking place in Web, Spectacular, Amazing and Spider-Man, with a little text blurb for each.

General Comments

It was hard to rate this book because it is not like your average comic. It is mostly blank pages waiting to be filled with the newsprint of Amazing Spider-Man that will be clipped and saved within. There was the retelling of the origin of Spider-Man in newsprint form which was very interesting to see how they divided the entire origin story into sections that couldn't consist of more than 4 panels. Each strip had to be able to stand alone but at the same time be able to link all of them together. I thought it was really nicely done.

Overall Rating

What I think finally swayed my decision to give this book a 4 web rating was that it made me remember how much fun I had buying the sticker albums from my favorite cartoon series growing up and baseball sticker albums as well. The album itself was only a buck or two but you could then go out and buy little packs of stickers that were maybe a little smaller than twice the size of your average postage stamp and stick them in their appropriate box within the album. It was so much fun collecting and sticking the stickers in their order, that they would eventually, after collecting enough of them, tell a story (or in the case of my baseball sticker album complete a team roster).

For the trip down memory lane this book took me on I gave it a higher rating then average. Now if only I could find the newspaper strips that belong in it, I would be thrilled.