"Learning to Crawl, part 2"
(writer) Dan Slott
(artist) Ramon Perez
(colorist) Ian Herring
Dan Slott's "between the lines" miniseries "Learning to Crawl" continues, and this issue takes place in between and around the events of 1963's "The Amazing Spider-Man #1" in which Spider-Man tries to join the Fantastic Four, only for their first meeting to go sour. Peter continues to grapple with his problems; he cannot explain to the school counselor why he is always withdrawn, and why he actually has a black eye. Peter makes up a generic excuse that ends up sounding like a wrongful accusation of Midtown High jock Flash Thompson. Meanwhile, Clayton Cole, who now dresses up as a superhero, outfits himself with an interesting sound-based gadget, and calls himself "Clash," takes his admiration for Spidey up a notch, and even arranges a meeting with him with the help of some big bucks. All told Peter ends up making one good decision, and one he may yet regret.
I quite enjoyed this issue, as I did the last one. Slott writes a meaty issue that tells a full story, even as it leads into the next installment, and it's particularly remarkable that he was able to pack as much as he did into it, considering that he only had nineteen pages to work with this time, which is Marvel's shitty way for docking the readers one page after last issue's extra page. Of course, the page shortage isn't Slott's fault, although I have to say, I still have some problems with the basic premise of the miniseries.
Clearly the purpose of this series is to launch "Clash," whether as a hero or as a villain, and although he starts out as wanting to be the former, the closing pages of the issue seem to suggest that he goes the way of Syndome in the Pixar's The Incredibles. Either way, though, by situating his origin so near so near to Spidey's, Slott will either have to throw this Clash in jail by the end of this series, send him to the Negative Zone, kill him or otherwise remove him from the picture for at least the next ten "comic-book years" to account for his absence from fifty-one years of Spider-Man stories. That's really just the problem with retcons, along with all of the anachronisms I pointed out from the first issue.
This is a shame, because as narrative flow goes, this issue is magnificent, no matter how derivative the origin story of "Clash" feels. This is the Spider-Man I grew up with: a guy always wanting to do the right thing but who all too often makes bad decisions along the way; I loved the way Slott handles Peter's quandary with the guidance counselor, and the subsequent run-in with Flash Thompson. It's really wonderful stuff, and more than the ham-handed retconning of a new character into Spidey's past, is this aspect of the series that makes it worth reading. Ramon Perez gives more of his magnificent Steve Ditko/Tim Sale hybrid art and on top of it all is a magnificent Alex Ross cover. The first one just featured Spidey in costume and actually looked pretty generic, but this one, with Silver Age Peter's tensed-up face, actually said a little something about the story inside the comic book, even if the representation was more impressionist than literal.
I'm definitely finishing this particular miniseries. For all its flaws, it's arguably the best Spider-Man book on sale today.
8.5/10
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