Instead, the reader is just dropped into the deep end of the pool and is forced to swim. There’s no learning curve for first-time fans, and not a lot of time spent on trying to catch up lapsed readers on why Marvel randomly decided to publish a flashback series filled with never-before-seen stories about Spider-Man. That’s because Untold Tales is unquestionably geared towards the most passionate of Spider-Man fans. Granted, we’re only one issue into the series, and the way Slott and Perez end things in that comic, the potential to go in a wildly different direction is there.īut Busiek and Olliffe manage to bring the reader into the thick of their story with far more speed and efficiency. My biggest concern with “Learning to Crawl’s” first issue last week was the fact that despite all of the love and respect Slott and Perez show for Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, I didn’t feel that the comic illuminated anything new and exciting about Peter’s origin story that had the potential to truly grab a hold of my attention. Instead, Busiek and Olliffe, with the precision of cardiovascular surgeon, operate around all of the little gaps between Amazing Fantasy #15 and ASM source material, managing to produce undeniably great new content. It doesn’t attempt to break down the Spider-Man mythos and start all over again a la the far inferior Spider-Man Chapter One. There’s nothing overly flashy or extraordinary about Untold #1. In terms of an inaugural issue, there may be no Spider-Man “B” series that immediately hooks me as well as Untold Tales of Spider-Man #1. What I would have discovered was a series that was both reverential to the original source material (similar to Dan Slott and Ramon Perez’s “Learning to Crawl” miniseries), while also taking some well calculated risks that led to some of the most fun and breezy Spidey stories since the Tom DeFalco/Ron Frenz era on Amazing Spider-Man. It could be argued that things would have been very different for me as a comic book fan if I had just ignored the “mainstream” Spider-Man books and instead opted for this curious little series that was pumped out by creators Kurt Busiek and Pat Olliffe (and at 99 cent an issue, I would have had a little more money in my wallet at the end of the month). Instead, I was too busy wasting my time following the meandering “Clone Saga” from book to book, getting increasingly frustrated to the point that I flat out quit reading comics for a number of years until Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man franchise reinvigorated my interest in the medium.
I think one of my biggest regrets I’ve had as a Spider-Man fan is the fact that I missed out on the Untold Tales of Spider-Man series the first time around.
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