Alpha Big Time 3, Avenging Spider-Man 19

Alpha Big Time 3
Fialkov (w) and Plati (a and c)

The Alpha Big Time mini-series continues to be better than expected as Alpha finds himself getting embroiled in the suddenly weird city of Pittsburgh. He comes to love interest Soupcan's (that's the name Susan insists on going by because she's a tortured poet/hipster type, saying that Susan is her slave name) aid as a fire in the building over from her work starts to spill into her building. He rescues and hits on her (the rescuing is pretty successful, the hitting on is less so) before returning to Peter Parker (he talked to Spider-Man at the beginning about how much he hates his powers) for tests, citing a new power as his reason to come talk. Peter examines him and deduces that one of his growing powers is sense-related, as Alpha had come to Soupcan's aid after hearing her yelling for help from his house miles away. Peter (still Doc Ock over there) tells him to tough it out and that he doesn't need to come see him for every little problem. Back in Pittsburgh and angsting on top of a building, Alpha tries out his new power, testing its limits. He suddenly can see and hear far too much around him and he freaks out again, worrying that he has too much responsibility, that he can't save everyone who he's hearing in trouble. However, he manages to isolate out Soupcan on the phone, telling someone that Andy would have a chance with her if he just toned down the superhero thing. This sends Alpha into a joy. He visits the patient he put in the hospital (who he seems to have a weird therapeutic relationship with) to tell him all about Soupcan and everything else (terrible plan for a hero to a possible villain) and leaves just before the weird, now blue-sludgeballish patient rises from his bed and kills a nurse, screaming for Alpha. Alpha heads home and puts out another fire on the way, saying "there is an inordinate number of fires in this city" (which, for my money, is the best moment in this issue) and flying away. We're shown someone who's apparently pulling the strings behind the recent weirdness (factory monster and all the fires) in Pittsburgh and who is now gunning for Alpha and his loved ones. Seems pretty brutal to push Alpha off.
Still, the series continues to impress by making Alpha more likable and yet still somewhat obnoxious (as he had been in Amazing Spider-Man). He's still pretty inexperienced so he doesn't connect the dots between this inordinate amount of fires and the factory monster and his own level of notoriety and so on. Next issue promises a team-up with Thor, so we're going to put two almost impossibly strong heroes with brash personalities together to fight some bad guys. Could be a lot of fun or could end in Alpha dead at Thor's hands. Either way, I suppose.

Avenging Spider-Man 19
Yost (w) and Checchetto (a) and Rosenberg (c)

Interesting issue as Avenging Spider-Man again introduces me to a character I'm unfamiliar with but curious about. This time, Doc Spidey has to pair up alongside the mysterious Sleepwalker, a regular guy who enters the Mindscape when he sleeps, leaving behind a mysterious hero who fights off threats that escape the Mindscape. Doc Spidey ends up in the Mindscape, attacked by a fearworm (who Sleepwalker thought had died off long before) which causes him to relive horrible moments and fears of his past. They mostly, for Doc Ock, revolve around his abusive father hitting him when he was a young and defenseless and small but chubby child. It's more emotional stuff to root Doc Ock's villainy in realness and create sympathy for his character and it's pretty well done,w ith pretty great art and colors from the creative team. The most interesting part, though, is that he's also attacked by the ghost Peter who has been popping up in Superior Spider-Man, who the audience knows to be the real Peter stuck as an observer in his own body. Everything is a little surreal for Doc in this place, though it feels real enough for him. While the audience can quickly figure out that everything in here is just in Doc's mind, we also know it's pretty likely that the ghost Peter who jumps on Doc and starts fighting him is the real Peter we've been seeing in Superior Spider-Man. Doc himself lets on to having his own suspicions at the end of the issue, which is true over in Superior Spider-Man too (more on that in a second). Just when Doc Spidey is at his lowest point against the fearworm, he manages to channel enough anger and power (possibly from Peter within him) to push through and throw the worm off him long enough for Sleepwalker to destroy the worm.
One of the things that I've found most intriguing and rewarding about this series is the way that it's almost effortlessly tied to Superior Spider-Man while that series is going on. There's a very interesting subplot going on wherein Doc Spidey is collecting his former Sinister Six cohorts (taking the grain of sand that contains Sandman, capturing and hanging on to Electro). On top of that, now Doc Spidey is starting to suspect that Peter is trapped somewhere inside and will likely be forced to take some action in that. That parallels nicely with the same revelation that Doc has come to in Superior Spider-Man about Peter without really trying to drill it home. It's a smart book and it's developing a real point of its own, whereas it had started as a kind of fun companion book but definitely missable. Yost is showing his chops at weaving stories and planting seeds again and it just makes me miss Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes even more.