Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #105-106: United We Fall / No Fury

Script: Peter David
Pencils: Luke McDonnell

When the action focuses on the Wasp and Paladin for nine whole pages, issue #105 sure begins to feel like an edition of Marvel Team-Up.

Not that that's a bad thing. Who doesn't miss Marvel Team-Up? Clearly, no-one who's reading these issues.

This starts out as quite an unengaging story about a company that I've never heard of considering selling another company that I've never heard of to a character I've never heard of. Heck, I'll take the easy way out and let Spider-Man fill you in on NEVELL. Pay attention now.

Spider-Man: "It's a company that Janet van Dyne, A.K.A. the Wasp, owns, having just bought it outright... so that Northeastern, a shipping company NEVELL owns, wouldn't be sold to a lowlife gangster named Vince Granetti. Granetti wants to use Northeastern to smuggle drugs for his own company – Consolidated Importers. He had a union head, Bob Sanchez, knocked off just to encourage NEVELL to sell out. But Jan bought it instead. So Granetti sent that super-thug, Paladin, with an ultimatum. That ultimatum was... Is anyone listening here?"

Starfox: "With bated breath, webbed one."

Starfox's dry remark actually read "with baited breathe", which I would let roll, except that there are one or two other slips in the language in this one. The narrator's tense seems to slide around a bit too.

Narration: "Granetti had three shipments coming in this night. Spider-Man's time was wasted breaking up an innocent shipment of grapefruit.

The Wasp wasted her time apprehending stuffed toys filled with sugar.

So far it's been a fiasco, except that Spidey now has lots of sugar to put on his grapefruit.

No one except Granetti knew which shipment was drug-laden. That the real shipment was going by train.

Granetti's taking no chances. And he's wasting no time at all."

Not that I can really criticize or had a problem with that, me hardly using queen's english on this Blog, do I?

This story does run slowly, particularly in the first half, but this gives the author the opportunity to indulge in a lot of character-driven banter. As you may have gleaned from my other reviews, I think comedy in Spider-Man is generally a good thing, and this one is so dialogue-heavy that it plays-out like a really well-written sitcom.

Spider-Man: "Yeesh! What's that guy got anyway?"

Wasp: "A certain je ne sais quoi."

Spider-Man: "And that means...?"

Wasp: "'I don't know what.'"

Spider-Man: "If you don't know what it means, how can you say it?"

Wasp: "You're kidding, right?"

Spider-Man: "You'll never know."

lol