Solid (SPOILERS!!!)
So lets recap on Vol.3 so far; The first arc sucked, Black Cats character was ruined, sh!t dialogue, Silk sucked etc, then there was some filler, move on, then Spider-Verse one of the most hyped up stories of all time, that started promising then turned into a complete an utter mess of an event. Basically there was too many characters and not enough issues or pages to flesh them out properly, (yeah I know there were tie-ins but I'm just going off by issues 9-15). Then another three issue filler arc, which also sucked. Towards the end there is also Conway's arc which is still going right now and it's good.
Marvel are also hypocrites, maybe there's different people running the scene now but it ticks me off. When JMS wanted to make Peter the father in Sins Past (which would have easily improved the story) they said it would age him. I think it was part of their reasoning behind OMD too, the whole marriage/father thing making Peter appear too old. Maybe this story is an experiment to reconsider the marriage and possibly a child, it's all speculation, but that's just my two cents worth.
Now onto RYV. First of all this comic shouldn't even exist, because OMD shouldn't have even happened to begin with!! When it was first announced, I was interested, the creative team (well the writer anyway) left me cautious. I feel like any Spider-Man comic with Slotts name attached should have a label underneath that says: 'Proceed with caution/at your own risk'. But no, I was surprised. It's a fairly solid issue, there are some flaws for sure, but I can overlook those for now...
First of all, the art's great, Spider-Verse had fantastic art, but that didn't help it much. I'm glad Ramos is only on (variant) cover duty, which is good. He was doing covers back on Peter Parker: Spider-Man and they were great. The dialogue wasn't too bad either, some parts could have used some tweaking, but at least Peter Parker didn't yell out: "I HAVE TO BE AMAZING!" like in issue 8 last year, how embarrassing for the writer.
The Peter, Mj dynamic was pretty good, but not on the same level JMS had it, years ago and that's why I like this comic, the setting reminds of the early JMS stories, the crappy apartment, few supporting characters, (what I mean by that is there was only Peter, Mj and Aunt May back then, no stupid Anna Maria, Sajani or Silk or those Horizon loser rejects) and it wouldn't be a JMS story without an original villain every arc. Now JMS had some pretty interesting villains, the most memorable being Morlun. The big baddie we got brief glimpses of was Regent. So far he's just another cliche. Just imagine a thanos/darkseid/apocalypse type villain with the face of Lobo, who's bald, that's Regent lol. He displays some impressive power and kills all the Avengers, but right now, to me he's just a power hungry, planet conqueror. I hope Slott can give him more development and set him aside from all the rest :) (At the end it was shown that he was ruling but things were still nice so that's different for a change, I guess)
A villain I think would have been suited better to this story instead of Regent was Fusion created by Paul Jenkins for PP:S-M. If you don't know, he blames Spider-Man for the death of his son who tried to emulate him. He's has the power of every hero and villain you can imagine (like Regent) though it turns out he was only making Spider-Man believe he did, basically he was a mutant with the ability to powerfully persuade others. Since it's a different universe you could just say he can copy every power without the persuasion and the fact Peter has a child of his own now would make it very personal and bitter between the two. Readers may already know the character, so less time is spent developing him like Regent would need. There you go, fan fiction in a review, I think it sounds good lol.
You may have noticed I haven't talked about Mayday, erm I mean Annie and yeah there isn't much to tell right now. She's a powerful motivator for Peter and it's going to be interesting to see how the family function together in the following issues, hoping for some great chemistry from the family, but that all depends on the writing at the end of the day. Some people have expressed their dislike of the name 'Annie', it's an interesting choice by Slott, to me it sounds slightly old fashioned, but maybe it's named after Aunt Anna. I would have preferred Mayday, the fan service alone would have been cool, but not everything has to be connected either.
Speaking of fan service/easter eggs, that Ollie the firefighter character had a brief cameo which I liked, even though I hated the character last year because he got in between of Pete and Mj, I thought it was still nice too see. It didn't really matter because he and friends got rekt by Venom and I'm not talking about that Flash Thompson rubbish, I mean the REAL Venom, the jacked up, steroid abusing beast of a mother f@#$er is back! He's still menacing, funny and has plans for Annie until Spidey dumps an entire building on him, which supposedly kills him, which I find that very hard to believe, unless the Symbiote abandoned Brock to save itself from the fire, one its few weakness. Either way, great to see Eddie Venom again.
Spidey, doesn't @#$% around either this issue, he pretty much beats Venom into submission and gives zero @#$% when that Vulture loser is flying around. Awesome. This comic does jump several years ahead at the end, what I want to see is some flashbacks of Peter during the time jump showing his change in character, purely for development. Maybe one where he is contemplating confronting Regent to avenge the Avengers then coming to his senses with the help of Mj and after thinking about his family. I just don't want to see a character who has upheld sworn values for fifty years and abandon them in the next panel, there needs to be some sort of regression shown.
So in summary,
PROS:
-Mj and Pete together again, they work well together.
-Peter making web fluid lol. Strangely enough, I haven't seen him do this often, guess I haven't read enough comics.
-Eddie Venom.
-Peter then proceeds to beat up Eddie Venom lel.
-Great art.
-Variant artists deserve recognition too, their covers were great!
CONS:
-Venom dying from a collapsed building? com'on. I liked my explanation more btw :P (nitpick)
- Cliche villain? Right now it's a bit too early to judge, it's only been one issue, but still.
-Tighten the dialogue a bit (nitpick)
-Gaps need to be filled during jump in time, not really a complaint right now, hopefully something that can be seen in later issues.
-Peter working at the Bugle still? I would have loved if that was part-time and he was still working as a teacher.
-Could Peter really hear Mj from inside the burning building? (nitpick)
-For what appeared to be the last ever Spider-Man (Brock) Venom fight, it could have been more epic and brutal, this is after reading Batman #40. I'm not saying that Venom needed to eat Spider-Man's arm off, but there wasn't any costume damage on Spider-Man, even after the building collapse.
For the rating, I'm leaning between a 7-8 out of 10, I'm in a generous mood today. Comic Vine need to bring back half stars.
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