Marvel Age Spider-Man Volume 4: The Goblin Strikes Digest (Spider-Man)

Rating:
Summary: The Green Goblin enters the world of Marvel Age Spider-Man
Review: Amazing how quickly these digest collections of "Marvel Age Spider-Man" make it to the stands. I just read issue #17 and here is Volume 4, "The Goblin Strikes," which brings together issues #12-16 of the Marvel comic book. What is happening with this particular Spider-Man comic book is that they are going back to the original stories of "The Amazing Spider-Man" written by Stan Lee and drawn by Steve Ditko from the early 1960s and are retelling them with a young Peter Parker in the 21st century. This is different from "Ultimate Spider-Man," which has restarted the Spider-Man saga from scratch for the 21st century with some major modifications (e.g., Mary Jane Watson is there from the start). "Marvel Age Spider-Man" sticks to the original version (e.g., Mary Jane is the unseen niece of the nice lady living next door to Aunt May).

This volume gets to be titled "The Goblin Strikes" because the Green Goblin is the villain in the first and last stories in the collection. "The Grotesque Adventure of the Green Goblin" introduces one of Spider-Man's key foes, as he enlists the Enforcers to spring a trap for Spider-Man, convincing the web-head that he is being asked to film a movie in the desert. The Goblin is not the only green Marvel character to make an appearance in this one. "Kraven the Hunter" has the title character being brought to the U.S. by the Chameleon to hunt down Spider-Man. "Duel with Daredevil" really involves the Ringmaster and his Circus of Crime, which succeeds in hypnotizing Spider-Man to be their willing slave but did not count on interference from DD. Then the Green Goblin returns in "Return of the Green Goblin," only to see Spider-Man run away when he learns that Aunt May has had a heart attack. Now everybody thinks Spider-Man is a coward.

These four issues of "Marvel Age Spider-Man" update issues #14-17 of "The Amazing Spider-Man." They skipped over the first "Spider-Man" comic book because it was rather lame and decided not to fill the gap with Spider-Man's origin in "Amazing Fantasy" #15 because they probably assume everybody knows how he came to be. If not, right above the title on the splash page there is a statement about how he was bitten by an irradiated spider and that the big lesson here is that with great power comes great responsibility. The original Lee & Ditko stories are updated by writers Mike Raicht, Jamal Ingle, Todd Dezago, and Shane Davis, and Mike Raicht and pencilers Shane Davis, Jay Leisten, Larry Stucker and Gus Vasquez, so there is a constant shift in the art work in this quartet of stories.

For those of us familiar with the original Spider-Man stories what is of interest here are all the little updates. Kraven is now the star of a television reality series Aunt May does not look as old and has more realistic concerns about Peter, who is having more problems than usual trying to date Betty Brant. Overall, Peter is not the nerdy bookworm he was the first time around (no glasses this time), and while Flash Thompson still picks on him, he is not as big a loser and there is actually more of a realistic relationship between him and J. Jonah Jameson as well. Spider-Man certainly cracks more one liners than he did before, but then the readership for this comic is going to be young kids weaned on celebrated movie lines. These attempts at modernization are not earthshaking, but they do make for interesting updates of the classic Spider-Man stories. They also allow younger readers to deal with Spider-Man as a teenager superhero, and not the old married guy he is now in the main Spider-Man comic books.