BACK TO BASICS pts I-III
Written by Nick Spencer
Penciled by Ryan Ottley
Covers by Ryan Ottley
Published July 11, July 25, and Aug 8 2018
Now that he’s lost everything, Pete has roommates now.. one of which is uber annoying d-list supervillain Boomerang. Either way, Pete is late for the ESU press conference he’s supposed to be covering for the Bugle. And that reason is because he’s fighting a frightening insect horde with the Avengers... And the Guardians of the Galaxy. But then a few weeks ago, he was winning the key to the city from their Kingpin...
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| Then this, this, this, this, and this happens... |
You know, this first issue was very irrationally disjointed. But somewhere in there, we find out a lot of people are annoyed with Spidey, we find out he’s been accused of plagiarizing from his old university thanks to the papers written by Doc Ock when he was in Pete’s body, and we learn that he’s now been fired from the Bugle for said plagiarizing. Finally it’s revealed that Mary Jane Watson is back with him, which is at least one win. Though it’s followed by despair that Aunt May is embarrassed to have a paper stealing ingrate for a nephew.
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| Never stop letting your fam down, Pete. |
Thankfully Empire State allows Pete to return to the university to earn his degree the right way. Only prob is he’ll be assisting the Lizard, Dr. Curt Connors. He reveals that thanks to a surgically implanted inhibitor chip, he’s able to fight his murderous desires. Further more, he’s now in possession of the Isotope Genome Accelerator. Clearly something the bad guys would love, Taskmaster and Black Ant break in to steal it.
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| Budget Skelator. |
Pete taunts them into throwing him out of the fray. In the confusion, Spider-Man leaps in to fight. He deals with the low priority baddies fairly quickly but is later completely surprised to see Peter Parker standing there right in front of him. So what does this mean? Well it means that Pete can join MJ and his roomie for bowling while this other Spider-Man can deal with the Tri-Sentinel in midtown.
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| Don't worry, Peter. I got this. Keep bowling. |
Apparently during the fight in Connor’s lab, he somehow triggered the Accelerator, splitting Pete from his alter ego. The two of them followed up the skirmish with a conversation, later highlighting a normal and boring non-powered Peter Parker living a quiet and unextraordinary life.
The third issue wraps with Dr. Connors showing to Pete an experiment. Using the Accelerator, he splits an intelligent lab rat into two separate rats. One has all of the best traits of the two, but the other is lacking in what he had before. This means the other Spider-Man even inherited the now intellect as well as superpowers. But what does it mean for Pete? We’ll have to wait as this issue is left to be continued.
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| The experiment officially proves it, Pete. You suck. |
So I fully expected this series to get a bit of a stale upgrade with the loss of Dan Scott. I also expected it to get off to a slow start, but I did not expect it to be this bad. Obviously everyone gets all jazzed up for their first issue of something, especially something as big as this title. But this went all over the place. I still don’t understand putting Mysterio, Taskmaster, Black Ant, and Boomerang in this book for really any reason. Spending pages and pages on Aunt May’s disappointment and Mary Jane flashbacks were also wastes of space while the books steadily tripped all over their own continuity. Not a whole lot revealed here excep the hole Dan Slott left the webhead in. Only time will tell if Nick Spencer can dig him out. I give these three a 6/10.
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