Review- AMAZING SPIDER-MAN VOL. 2: SPIDER-VERSE PRELUDE

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN VOL. 2: SPIDER-VERSE PRELUDE (Marvel, First Printing, 2015; Softcover)

Collects Amazing Spider-Man #7, 8, Superior Spider-Man #32, 33, and the Spider-Man story from Free Comic Book Day 2014: Guardians Of The Galaxy #1 (cover dates May- December, 2014)

Writers: Dan Slott with Christos Gage

Artists: Giueseppe Camuncoli with Cam Smith, John Dell, Humberto Ramos, Victor Olazaba, Adam Kubert, and M.A. Sepulbeda

Colorists: Antonio Fabela with Edgar Delgado, Rain Beredo, and Richard Isanove

This is another book that my 9 year old son checked out of the local library and wanted to read with me. I enjoy not paying for comic books and wish that I would have thought of this ages ago, as most comics are worth one read only. Endless relaunches and renumbering have made wanting to own a complete run of anything meaningless to me.

Morlun is back, and this time he has company in the form of his family, who come from Universe 000 and once battled the Master Weaver of the Web Of Life. The whole Multiverse angle is so DC. While Alan Moore and later Chris Claremont had fun with it with Captain Britain, the whole thing reeks of the same thing that has made DC's continuity such a hodge-podge clusterf**k. Morlun and his family are chasing the various “Spider-totems”, going to each universe and killing him/her/it, taking their energy and growing stronger. Doctor Octopus, occupying Spider-Man's brain and acting as the Superior Spider-Man, recruits endless variations of Spider-Man from across the multiverse in hopes of defeating Morlun and his relatives.

This whole book is basically a set up for the Spider-Verse crossover, along with a quick team-up with the new Ms. Marvel. The artwork is better here than it was in the last book since it was not by Humberto Ramos. Slott is a solid writer. I said my piece on what I think of him in my review for Volume 1, so I see no need to go through with explaining all of that again.

My son's take: It was okay. (I liked) That they went from dimension to dimension and that you got to see a bunch of different Spider-Mans. I liked that there was rarely (any) swearing in it. He disliked the new Ms. Marvel. Because I am used to the older Ms. Marvel, like they had in the olden days (referring to the 2000s).

So this was fun bedtime reading to my son over a few nights. He enjoyed it so much that he asked me if we could check out Volumes 3 and 4 from the library. My hold on them finally came in and we will be reading them together shortly.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 3.5 out of 5.

The OCD zone-

Paper stock: Good weight coated stock with a slight sheen.

Binding: Perfect bound trade paperback.

Cardstock cover notes: Laminated cardstock cover.