The Amazing Spiderman

A Tribute

Some 38 years since Peter Parker, a normal school kid, was bitten by a radioactive spider on a school trip and turned into a red and blue clad superhero, Spiderman (as he called himself) is still one of the world's favourite heroes. Spiderman, along with Batman and Superman, is one of the big three, one of the comic book heroes that even non comic books fans have heard of. As at this time the Spiderman titles out sell both the DC heroes.

That is not to say that it has all been plain sailing for the world famous web slinger, people still shudder at the mention of clones, which was a particularly maligned plot line of a few years ago.

However, things have changed, in Issue 30, a special collected edition which acted as issues 30, 31 & 32, a new kid was in town. J Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 fame has taken over the scripting duties with impressive results, backed up with excellent pencilling from john Romita jr and inks by Scott Hanna, the future looks bright for Amazing Spiderman.

Showing the deft touches that made the first four seasons of Babylon 5 so great, JMS has brought something new to Spiderman, not only a brand new villian, JMS has promised that he won't be recycling old baddies but will be giving us a whole lot of new evils to read and enjoy.

Amazing Spiderman seems to be on track to being back to its very best, long may it continue.

It is not only the arrival of JMC that makes the future of our favourite aracnid so rosy, unless you have been living in a cave, you cannot have failed to see that there is a multi million dollar production of Spiderman on its way. Directed by Sam Raimi (Evil Dead, Xena etc), and starring Toby Maguire (Pleasentville) as Peter Parker/Spiderman, Kirsten Dunst (interview with the vampire) as Mary Jane Watson and the excellent William Dafoe (Shadow of the vampire, Speed 2, heh heh) as Spiderman's arch enemy the Green Goblin.

The movie is big budget and hoping to follow in the footsteps of the excellent and mega successful X-men, judging by the bits that I have seen so far, and bearing in mind that they still have until next summer to improve, it should blow away the awful memories of the Nicholas Hammond "films" of the seventies, one of which I actually saw at the cinema, although I was a child in my defence.

So great things are expected of the film, with a great cast and a talented director with a proven track record, we await the arrival of next summer with bated breath. Everybody sing along

"Spiderman Spiderman, does whatever a spider can..."

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