written by various
drawn by various
I'm not always a big fan of these oversized anthology issues because they tend to be a mixed bag in terms of quality, but for Spider-Man's 60th birthday celebration last year, which I quite notably almost missed, Marvel has brought out the big guns, with heavyweight creators almost too numerous to name. Industry legends Neil Gaiman, Kurt Busiek, Jonathan Hickman and a host of other writing superstars and up-and-comers join former regular Spider-man writer Dan Slott in crafting a series of short stories set in various periods of Spidey's history, whether past, present or future. Joining them are an all-star lineup of artists, many of whom have already made an indelible mark on the web slinger like Steve McNiven, Marco Checchetto, Olivier Coipel, and Jim Cheung (to name but a few).
The mammoth 68-page volume features so many stories it's kind of pointless to post synopses of all of them. Highlights for me, though were the Slott and Cheung collaboration which showed Spidey still fighting crime in his 60s, the Hickman and Checchetto story in which 616 Spidey meets with his multiversal counterparts to ask for advice on dealing with the "Parker luck," and the pleasantly whimsical quasi auto-biographical story by Gaiman and McNiven in which Gaiman essentially recalls how he first came to meet Spider-Man. Some stories I liked better than others but each and every story featured here is an absolute charmer and I appreciate Marvel for giving each team of creators room to breathe a little bit. This was an extremely well-curated book, in my opinion.
Thank you for this treat, Marvel. It may have been Spidey's 60th birthday last year, but we're the ones who got the awesome present.
10/10
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