Spider-Man: Spider-Island

Spider-Man: Spider-Island by Dan Slott
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When people all over New York starting waking up with Spider powers, including his girlfriend, Spider-Man swings into action. Soon, New York is infested with Spider-Men and the Avengers are called in. But what happens when everyone starts to mutate? And who is the source of the infection? And can Spider-Man stop the epidemic before it leaves Spider-Island?

After my experience with Spider-Man: Big Time Ultimate Collection, I decided to dip my toes into another Spider-Man collection and this one sounded great. Was it?

Eh. The main concept itself was a really cool idea. People are granted Spider-powers and chaos ensues. Spider-Man and company race against impossible odds and fix everything with all the thrills of a summer block buster. What could go wrong?

Well, my main gripe is that it was too long for what it was and hinged too much on too many ancillary Spider-characters, like Venom and Anti-Venom. Coupled with that, Humberto Ramos' art seemed rushed in about half of his pages. Also, it turns out I'm not a big fan of Rick Remender's writing. He's no Dan Slott, that's for sure.

Now that I got the gripes out of the way, here's a ton of stuff that I liked:
- Mary Jane with Spider-powers
- J. Jonah Jameson with Spider-Powers
- The Shocker with six arms
- Kaine and Spidey teaming up to take on the main villain
- Kaine's final fate
- Reed Richards' involvment
- Gravity and Firestar being referred to as Spider-Man's Amazing Friends
- Shang Chi teaching Spidey kung fu
- events from The Other storyline referenced, complete with organic web shooters
- The Parker luck kicking in

With rumors of Kaine stepping into Spider-Man's shoes after Amazing Spider-Man #700, I figured I should see where it all began. While it wasn't as good as Big Time, it was still fun. It's a high three.

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