Spider-Man: Life Story by Chip ZdarskyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
What If Spider-Man aged in real time after his debut in 1962? is the core concept for this. Each of the six issues is a point in a different decade in Spider-Man's life, taking him from being a teenager in the 1960s to an old man in the 2010s.
The creative team on this is top notch. Mark Bagley is a Spider-Man all-timer, starting with his debut issue, Amazing Spider-Man #351. I'm not super familiar with Chip Zdarsky's work other than Marvel Two-In-One and Howard The Duck but this makes me want to read more of it.
As Peter ages, the book hits a lot of the bigger Spider-Man beats, like his feud with the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus marrying Aunt May, the alien costume, Kraven's Last Hunt, Civil War, and even the dreaded Clone Saga. Some of the events turn out much differently than they did in the main Marvel Universe.
For the most part, I enjoyed this quite a bit. Zdarsky and Bagley take Spider-Man and the Marvel Universe into some interesting directions. The first four issues were gold. I thought the last two could have been better, though. Seeing some of the older storylines play out in this new timeline was great, as was Peter actually growing up and growing old.
I'm not sure what my specific problems with the final issues were. Maybe because they're rooted in modern event comics that are already being forgotten, like Spider-Man being a totem of spiders or Doctor Octopus taking over Peter's body. Or maybe I just didn't want Spider-Man to die.
It wasn't Spider-Man's Dark Knight Returns like I thought it might be but Spider-Man: Life Story is the best Spider-Man book I've read in quite some time. Four out of five stars.
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