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This collection brings us back to a different time in comic book history. Many fans reading today may not remember what a big splash the first issue of Spider-Man made back in 1990. This was back in the day when multiple covers ruled the day and comics sold in the millions instead of the tens of thousands. Think about that for a minute; Spidey #1 with all its different covers sold millions, just like X-Men #1 and X-Force #1 shortly afterwards. All three of those comics had something in common: superstar artists. X-Force had Liefeld, X-Men had Lee and Spider-Man had the grand-daddy of them all – Todd MacFarlane. Todd’s art was really electric and it moved issues. But, as Jim Salicrup wrote in the introduction, Todd wanted to do more. He wanted to control what he drew by writing a bit. He didn’t expect much but he got a lot, he was handed the reigns of the brand new Spider-Man solo title and this collection collects that first arc called Torment.
-The Bottom Line- Torment was a big arc 20 years ago but I don’t know if it stands up as well today as it did then. That’s not to say it is a bad story, because it isn’t. You can really tell this was Todd’s first story he really worked on as a writer and some of the pacing seems a bit off. Sure we have our hero (Spider-Man) battling a mindless, bloodthirsty, Lizard. Lizard’s no more than a puppet for Calypso, the daughter of Kraven who wants revenge. The storytelling is more like we see now with the drawn-out plots aimed at a specific trade paper back release. Those stories work really well in trade form (which this is) and the real reason to get this is to see how Todd influenced things so much and how we still feel its influence. It seems that even 20 years later we are stuck with these endless 5-6 part arcs that have an arbitrary length just to move trades and I think that started around this time. Visually Todd was a much better storyteller than he was with his writing and this tale does look beautiful with its really interesting layouts. It’s not the greatest story you’ll ever read and it isn’t even a definitive Spidey story but newer readers will find an appreciation to this more so than any of the great Silver or Bronze age stuff because of how similar it is to today’s comics. I’d say this recommended to at least check out a very influential comic.
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Questions? Comments? Shoot me an email.
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