SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE
SLJ Blog Network +
  • 100 Scope Notes
  • A Fuse #8 Production
  • Good Comics for Kids
  • Heavy Medal: A Mock Newbery Blog
  • Teen Librarian Toolbox
  • The Classroom Bookshelf
  • The Yarn
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • About/Contact
  • Previews
  • Reviews
  • Manga
  • All Ages
  • Young Adult
  • Interviews
  • News

July 9, 2019 by J. Caleb Mozzocco

Review: ‘Marvel Action: Spider-Man: A New Beginning’

July 9, 2019 by J. Caleb Mozzocco   1 comments

Marvel Action: Spider-Man: A New Beginning (Book One)
Writer: Delilah S. Dawson
Artist: Fico Ossio
IDW Publishing; $9.99

Let’s ignore the surreality of Marvel, a comic book company, licensing its characters to another comic book company in order to produce all-ages Marvel comics. As strange as the very existence of IDW’s Marvel Action line might be, one can’t argue with the results: Thus far, the ongoing Marvel Action: Avengers and Marvel Action: Spider-Man have been just as good as the best current Marvel-published comics featuring those characters, with the added bonus of being all-ages friendly and easily accessible to anyone who has seen Marvel movies or cartoons, even if they haven’t been keeping up with the monthly comics for years.

Delilah S. Dawson, a prose novelist with a steadily increasing number of comics credits to her name, takes advantage of the opportunity offered by a brand-new, continuity-free Spider-Man comic to have original Spider-Man Peter Parker share the spotlight with fellow spider-people Miles Morales and Gwen Stacy.

SCROLL TO KEEP READING THIS POST

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

This isn’t the first Spider-Man adventure in which the trio were part of an ensemble, of course—there’s the matter of that wildly successful Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse movie, for example—but Dawson comes up with a rather clever solution to make them co-stars without resorting to anything as dramatic as different dimensions and alternate realities. Rather, in Dawson’s Spider-Man, Peter Parker, Miles Morales and Gwen Stacy are all teenage peers and also all spider-powered heroes with similar costumes.

Peter Parker is still the original and thus most experienced Spider, but here only by a little bit. He might be the only Spider-Man at the beginning of the first issue, but by the end of this collection of the series’ first three issues, Miles and Gwen have also debuted in their own costumes and also revealed their secret identities to one another, making them something of a Spider-Man team.

The three first meet as part of a Daily Bugle intern contest sponsored by Stark Industries, where the prize is to interview Tony Stark, the billionaire genius celebrity alter ego of Iron Man, one of the only superheroes whose identity is publicly known. That appeals to Peter, Miles, and Gwen, as each of them feel pretty alone and have lots of questions about this whole superhero thing they’d love to talk to Stark about, but billionaire genius celebrities aren’t all that easy for high schoolers to get hold of.

Meanwhile rats, dogs, and other common New York City fauna are appearing in aggressive mutant forms, and it will take the combined efforts of all three spider-heroes to put a stop to the mad scientist/classic Spider-Man villain behind the chaos.

Pretty perfectly structured as a three-part story arc, New Beginning has each character narrate each successive issue, so that the book begins mostly as a Spider-Man solo book, then in the second issue the just-slightly-newer-at-this Miles Morales looks to Spidey as a sort of mentor, and in the third, Gwen suits up to follow her fellow interns only to discover not Peter and Miles but a pair of Spider-Men.

SCROLL TO KEEP READING THIS POST

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

All in all, it’s a pretty simple, elegant way of keeping the characters “themselves”  while also letting them coexist in the same Spider-Man comic, and it’s a premise that just plain wouldn’t have worked without the excuse of a brand-new comic in a brand-new version of the Marvel Universe.

Dawson’s partner is artist Fico Ossio. He excels at drawing Spider-Man, particularly this young version of Spider-Man (and friends), with a particularly big, bulbous head and bug-like eyes atop a skinny, somewhat spindly frame. All three spiders are instantly recognizable, but there seems to have been the slightest bit of tinkering done with the costumes, like Peter’s suit having blue soles, for example, or prominently displayed web-shooters.

While Ossio’s work is at its most impressive when he’s depicting Spider-Man doing the more dynamic Spider-Man things, he’s also pretty strong at the out-of-costume character bits, and his work somewhat evokes that of Mark Bagley, the long-time artist of Ultimate Spider-Man, the series that similarly restarted Spider-Man for newer readers (and, eventually, introduced Miles Morales).

So great art, sharp writing, and a clever premise offering a new take on one of the world’s most popular superheroes—this is more than just a new beginning, it’s a promising one.

Filed under: All Ages, Reviews

SHARE:

Read or Leave Comments
Delilah S. DawsonFico OssioGwen StacyIDW PublishingMarvel Action: Spider-Manmiles moralesSpider-Man

About J. Caleb Mozzocco

J. Caleb Mozzocco is a way-too-busy freelance writer who has written about comics for online and print venues for a rather long time now. He currently contributes to Comic Book Resources' Robot 6 blog and ComicsAlliance, and maintains his own daily-ish blog at EveryDayIsLikeWednesday.blogspot.com. He lives in northeast Ohio, where he works as a circulation clerk at a public library by day.

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Posts

January 2023

Andy Warner's Oddball Histories: Pests and Pets | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

January 2023

My Sister, the Cat, vol. 1 | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

January 2023

History Comics: Rosa Parks & Claudette Colvin | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

October 2022

A Costume for Charly | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

September 2022

History Comics: The Roanoke Colony | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

ADVERTISEMENT

SLJ Blog Network

100 Scope Notes

One Star Review, Guess Who? (#184)

by Travis Jonker

A Fuse #8 Production

Review of the Day – Trees: Haiku from Roots to Leaves by Sally M. Walker, ill. Angela McKay

by Betsy Bird

Good Comics for Kids

Review: Nat the Cat Takes a Nap

by Esther Keller

Heavy Medal

March suggestions: early Mock Newbery possibilities

by Emily Mroczek-Bayci

Teen Librarian Toolbox

Here Be Monsters: On Horror, Catharsis, and Uneasy Truces with Yourself, a guest post by author Rebecca Mahoney

by Karen Jensen, MLS

The Classroom Bookshelf

The Classroom Bookshelf is Moving

by Erika Thulin Dawes

The Yarn

Jarrett and Jerome Pumphrey Try Something New

by Travis Jonker

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Articles on SLJ

LGBTQIA+ Graphic Novels for Young Readers | Stellar Panels

The 2019 Eisner Award Nominations, Reviewed

12 Graphic Novel Series Updates for Young Readers

Be Afraid (but not too afraid): Graphic novel horror for middle grade readers

Six Manga About People with Disabilities

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Scott Ivory says

    August 31, 2019 at 8:44 am

    I was able to read the first volume of this new Spider-Man comic, and seeing Peter Parker, Miles Morales and Gwen Stacy together, as a team, they really should be a team more often, instead of always doing it separately, but I wonder in many more volumes that will follow in time, will these Spiders encounter the Avengers, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy, Inhumans, and as for Hulk, his own team who were the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. in the Disney XD show, maybe they should be part of this new comic series, but last of all, the team of Spiders, they should be called the ‘Web Warriors.’

ADVERTISEMENT

Archives

Follow This Blog

Enter your email address below to receive notifications of new blog posts by email.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

Primary Sidebar

  • News & Features
  • Reviews+
  • Technology
  • School Libraries
  • Public Libraries
  • Age Level
  • Ideas
  • Blogs
  • Classroom
  • Diversity
  • People
  • Job Zone

Reviews+

  • Book Lists
  • Best Books
  • Media
  • Reference
  • Series Made Simple
  • Tech
  • Review for SLJ
  • Review Submissions

SLJ Blog Network

  • 100 Scope Notes
  • A Fuse #8 Production
  • Good Comics for Kids
  • Heavy Medal
  • Neverending Search
  • Teen Librarian Toolbox
  • The Classroom Bookshelf
  • The Yarn

Resources

  • 2022 Youth Media Awards
  • The Newbery at 100: SLJ Celebrates the 100th Anniversary of the Award
  • Special Report | School Libraries 2021
  • Summer Reading 2021
  • Series Made Simple Spring 2021
  • SLJ Diverse Books Survey
  • Summer Programming Survey
  • Research
  • White Papers / Case Studies
  • School Librarian of the Year
  • Mathical Book Prize Collection Development Awards
  • Librarian/Teacher Collaboration Award

Events & PD

  • In-Person Events
  • Online Courses
  • Virtual Events
  • Webcasts
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
  • Media Inquiries
  • Newsletter Sign Up
  • Content Submissions
  • Data Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Terms of Sale
  • FAQs
  • Diversity Policy
  • Careers at MSI


COPYRIGHT © 2023


COPYRIGHT © 2023