Trade Central Station: The Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus by David Michelinie & Todd McFarlane

My very first omnibus and damn it was good

     The creative team is in the title and boy did I have fun reading this. Now this is my very first omnibus and while I always wanted to read the Todd McFarlane spidey stuff, I never wanted to read what he had wrote. Let's be honest Todd can draw but he's a shit writer. Enter David Michelinie who's work on Iron Man is what they based the whole plot of Iron Man 2 around. The omnibus starts off with a story with Doc Ock. The first arc right off the bat is not drawn by Todd McFarlane. It's drawn by Alex Saviuk. Now Alex is a great artist in his own right, but I felt he was trying to be a clone of John Romita Jr.

                 In this book Michelinie and McFarlane play well off each other. Some of the pages have some pretty big story telling problems. Way too often do you have the writer, which is Michelinie, add a caption to a panel so you can follow what's going on in the story. It's not a bad comic book by any means.

                    I think that the signature parts of this book are at the very beginning when Venom debuts. He's hulking over poor Spidey in each and every panel when they fight. McFarlane my not be a great story teller but we all know that he can draw the hell out of Spider-Man. Along with the great stories you get some great action poses from Spidey when he's swinging around New York. But a lot happens. You get the Black Fox and you see when a crazy rich goober kidnapes Mary Jane. It's a real nice turnabout when MJ is the one to save Peter in those stories.

       At some point Flash Thompson starts dating the Black Cat and Peter and MJ move into the SOHO loft with Harry and Liz Osborn. Erik Larsen and Colleen Doran step in to lean a hand with the art chores. The only thing that I didn't care for is near the end when Spider-Man gets cosmic powers. This really just felt really out of place for Spider-Man. But hey if you like fun super-hero stories run out and buy this book. It's worth every penny. Hell buy it used if you have to, you just can't have my copy.

-Tash Moore