So I just got this in the mail at the end of last week, and finished it last night. I already had the, "Coming Home," TPB, which had issues 30-35 and I really liked that, so I read through the Omnibus pretty quickly (it was hard to put down).

JMS did a great job of taking Spider-Man back to his roots, and created a series that was firmly planted in the first 15 years of the title, while being told in a 21st Century style with 21st Century sophistication. While looking up info on Straczynski's run on ASM I was surprised to see that he wrote the title for seven years, which means there will be a Volume 2 and maybe a Volume 3.

I was surprised that JMS got the OK to make this major, shocking change to past continuity...



I'm not sure how I feel about that one. The other changes he made, though, (that were included in this book) didn't alter the past as much as they gave new reasons for why things happened, so I'm pretty much OK with most of them.

And I loved the new villains that he created. The run in this first Omnibus isn't a re-hash of previous issues. He didn't just have Spider-Man take on Electro for the 53rd time. Yes, Doctor Octopus does show up, but those issues have a different point of view than Ock's other appearances in the past.

My gripes about the Omnibus, though, are technical. No page numbers, and as a result of that there are no Table of Contents or chapter listings at the beginning. The individual credits for each issue are relegated to an overall credits page up front, with the credits graphics removed from each issue. And the cover art is presented clean, without the Amazing Spider-Man logo, Marvel Logo, issue number, price, etc. To me, all of those things are negatives. But the issues/stories themselves? I really liked them.

What I liked most was that (at least in this Omnibus) JMS ignored the stuff from the mid to late 90's that pissed me off at that time and drove me away from comics for a couple decades.

My guess is that Volume 2 comes out next year. I'll definitely buy that, too.


Oh, and I loved the fact that for #500 John Romita Sr. pencilled the last 4 pages of the issue. I'm a huge Romita Sr. fan.

Not sure how you feel about that one? What? Even fans of JMS just excuse that by saying it was editorially driven.

I wasn't buying comics at the time, and that was over 15 years ago, so I don't know whose idea it was, I'm just assuming it came from JMS. It certainly made for compelling reading, but

Oh, I'm just saying that even his defenders excuse away that particular storyline. It was horrid. It's up there with One More Day and Trouble as some of the most reviled spidey storylines (even with the Clone Saga, people have kind of softened up about how horrible it was).

Otherwise, I like what JMS did on the book. Which issues does this contain?

30-58 and 500-508.

And I'll never soften up my opinion on the 1990's Clone Saga, because it shit all over issues 149 & 150, which were two character defining issues.

That Gwen Stacy spoiler is still widely mocked to this day whenever I peruse Spider-Man discussions on other comic boards. I know the panels by heart because it gets posted so often.

Yeah, I can see that. To me, the story itself isn't bad at all (it's not great, but it's not bad), it's just gratuitous and unnecessarily salacious. They didn't need to go there and shouldn't have gone there.

But the rest of the book is really good. Aside from the technical, layout issues I mentioned...