Superior Spider-Man 4, Daredevil 23, Alpha Big Time 1

Superior Spider-Man 4
Slott (w) and Camuncoli and Dell (a) and Delgado (c)

Dan Slott is wasting no time getting the new Spider-Man familiar with his own history. After a couple of small time Spidey villains to kick off the series, last issue brought back the Vulture and this issue invokes recent villain Massacre and the Green Goblin. Recently, a lot of solo hero books are steering clear of their key villains, for one reason or another. Daredevil hasn't crossed Kingpin nor resurrected Bullseye. Hawkeye doesn't really have a huge villain (maybe Trickshot, who I think is upcoming, and maybe Crossfire? I don't know, he doesn't really get his own villains because his solo books don't tend to work out). Captain Marvel will be bringing in an old villain as a new arch soon, according to DeConnick. Cap is facing off against Zola, who is a kind of key villain, but I'd still rank him under Red Skull and Zemo, probably. But here, the new Spider-Man is really running the gamut. Of course, part of that is that Spider-Man's rogues gallery is a little more expansive than probably anyone else in Marvel and, like Batman, his best villains tend to shadow him in some way or they're closely related to Peter Parker. That doesn't totally affect Doc Ock in Peter's body, but, as one of Peter's biggest villains himself, he still typically has some connection to his enemies. Massacre, then, presents an interesting foil. Sociopathic, not entirely unlike Doc Ock, but with a bigger thirst for wanton destruction and murder and less of a need for intelligence. So there's plenty for Slott to play with.

On top of bringing up every villain he can pull together, Slott is weaving a compelling tale of what Doc Ock does in Peter's body to Peter's social life. It's hard to say for sure if there's any real care in his actions, if he really wants to stay close to Aunt May or get closer to Mary Jane, or if it's some kind of game for him, a game where he masters Peter's life in a way Peter never could. I personally lean towards the latter, but I think an argument could be made (slightly) in either direction. Doc isn't complete sociopath. He has real emotions and presumably could feel real love. However, his need to crush Peter Parker in every conceivable way kind of leads me to believe that one of those ways would even be posthumously (OR SO HE THINKS). It's a good question and it's something that will likely have to come up eventually, as he's forced to choose where his priorities lie. It sets us up for plenty of interesting situations as this series progresses. Between that and the stark differences in how Doc Spidey and the true Spider-Man operate, this book has manuevered itself into a good little position to ask some questions to Spider-Man readers. I think one of the ultimate questions we'll end up asking ourselves (depending on how the next couple issues/arcs develop, is who is the better Spider-Man? Is it worth having a Spider-Man who prevents more crime if he's also a jerk and has less of the responsibility that made Spidey so great? Or is it worth allowing a little more crime to make more morally sound decisions?

Daredevil 23
Waid (w) and Samnee (a) and Rodriguez (c)

Waid's run of Daredevil has been a very well-acclaimed run, garnering notice from all corners of the comic industry. It's been pretty tight, keeping arcs short and showing glimpses of bigger things. Glimpses of Matt's relationships, glimpses of the cracks in his newfound armor, glimpses of villains on the horizon, and glimpses of the darker, grittier Daredevil he's tried to leave behind. What's so interesting about this issue, tied to the last few, is that we're watching as a story expands in a couple directions. As I said, it's been a relatively tight book, keeping its cards pretty close and giving us these peeks to keep us wondering. Now the book is widening bit by bit. We're realizing an overarching scheme by some unseen villain, we're watching as Matt's relationships start to falter as his past lurks closer, and we're...well, we're seeing Foggy get cancer. There's not really a broad stroke there, it's awfully specific and terribly depressing. Either Brubaker or Bendis in their runs fake-killed Foggy in a prison stabbing as he visited Matt. Of course, he recovered from that simply because it was a fake-killing and not a for-real-killing. It was only ever meant to send him off the radar (SENSE. GET IT? BECAUSE DAREDEVIL HAS A RADAR SENSE. pfft, whatever, you just don't understand science). But cancer seems an awful lot harder to fake.

One of the things I've always appreciated about Daredevil comics, and that has followed this run well, is that the relationship between Foggy and Matt always seemed real. They were always real friends. That meant a lot of sacrifice (usually on Foggy's part), but also a lot of real love. That makes this harder than it would seem in probably most other superhero comics. It also leads to an interesting shift in priorities. Right now, Matt is going through his seemingly biggest problem since Shadowland and he's trying to work pieces together. However, Matt's priorities tend to be with Foggy (eventually). So how does Matt react here? Does he work on both? Do he and Foggy work out some sort of arrangement? Does he try to settle his business faster to, in theory, give himself more time with Foggy? For that matter, what kind of timeline does Foggy have? What kind of cancer is it? Are we talking treatable? Are we in the early stages? Plenty of questions here. Add to that the fact that this is a superhero comic called "Daredevil" wherein we will likely learn more about the secret attacker behind all of these recent trials for our hero and we've got ourselves a quickly growing story, blossoming from a new, more lighthearted look at the character while we all waited for him to break. Waid is playing a game with Daredevil and he's doing it masterfully. It's worth checking in on him if you're a comic fan in general. It also doesn't hurt that the art in this series has been outstanding, from people like Paolo Rivera straight on through to Chris Samnee. Great series so far.

Alpha Big Time 1
Fialkov (w) and Plati (a)

I expected worse from this series. I don't know what exactly I expected, but I expected worse than this. Alpha, when he was first introduced in the late stage of Amazing Spider-Man, was pretty annoying and took a lot out of me. He's an interesting idea, though. Peter Parker creates a teenage hero on accident, much like his own creation was an accident. However, Alpha (Andy Maguire) has far more power than Spidey ever had and his is growing. He has potentially limitless power once it all expands. And he's a teenager. In ASM, he was focused on the publicity of being a superhero and the cool-factor. It led to obvious mistakes, even with Spider-Man mentoring himself. Eventually, his recklessness caused people to die, so Peter worked out a way to negate the "Parker Particles" within him that slowed his growth to a crawl. Doc Ock Spidey, of course, wants to overwrite that and try again. This goes back to the whole "needs to be better than Peter in every way" bit I mentioned up above.

So Alpha, now understanding a little more what his powers can cause, accepts about ten percent of his power back and goes out superheroing. We've seen his life without the powers and, as it did before he got powers, it's pretty awful. The difference is that now, everyone knows he used to be a superhero and people give him no end of crap for it. Where his life had been dull and he'd gone unnoticed before his newfound powers, after he lost the powers he simply became a target for insults. This issue starts off by showing us some of that, teamed with both the resentment at Peter Parker for taking away his powers and being a bad mentor and also the understanding of why Peter had to take the powers away. It leaves us with an interesting feeling about where Alpha stands. He does seem to be a good kid, if still brash. He does also seem to have real regret about what happened his first time around. He still wants to be a superhero but he understands a little more what that really means. He's still a high schooler, he's still got some issues with Peter and with his personal life but he is leaning good, it seems. Regardless, just the questions about his motivations and how much heroing he can actually do without making mistakes and/or killing someone (as this issue ends, more or less) make this book an intriguing option going forward. We'll see how the rest of the series plays out but issue one definitely wasn't a bad start for this new five issue mini. Hopefully it can sustain. I think five issues will be a pretty solid gauge of the character going forward, or will at least give enough time to make Maguire irrelevant again.