While I loved the first volume, the second was a harder read. For some reason the issues with Mike Zeck art were not reproduced very well and it really made it harder to read. We get the last part of Bill Mantlo’s first lengthy run on the comic with villains like Iguana, The Schzoid Man, Swarm and the Frightful Four. There’s an annual story with Doc Ock, some of which I’d read in UK reprints as a little kid, so I was stoked to see the whole thing here.
Then we get the start of Roger Stern’s run, which doesn’t really find it’s footing until we get the Belladonna arc (question for the nerds – is this Belladonna the same one that features in Gambit’s backstory?), which more importantly features the first appearance of Roderick Kingsley and thus the start of the Spider-man storyline that was featured through much of the UK title “Spider-man and Zoids”, namely that of the Hobgoblin.
Hey Marvel, can you sort out the rights to put out Essential Zoids?
He also picks up the saga of the White Tiger’s battles with the Maggia (imagine the Mafia crossed with a Bond villain organisation like SPECTRE – that frequently employs supervillains) that Mantlo had started in the first volume. I do quite like the use of the Maggia by Mantlo and Stern in this series in the same way that Roxxon Oil would have been used elsewhere in the Marvel Universe at this time. They make a convient source of funds/muscle for costumed villains and as a neat background touch, but can also be brought to the fore on occasion as the main antagonist.
The third volume has more Stern for the first half, featuring stories which tend to feature returning villains or guest villains from other comics. We get the first appearance of Beetle’s Eighties armour that stopped him looking such a doofus, the Gibbon (!), Will O’ Wisp, Nitro, Ringer and Jack O’Lantern making the transition from Machine Man villain to Spidey villain. There’s a slightly annoying thing that happens here of storylines starting in this run that are finished elsewhere, namely that of the Wisp and Greg Salinger (the second Foolkiller).
Then for the second half we get Mantlo returning. And with him the introduction of Cloak and Dagger. There’s something about the Cloak and Dagger issues that blow away everything else in the book. While Ed Hannigan provides a lot of satisfactory art in this volume, for these issues he pulls out all the stops, and suddenly you have Eisner influences abound and the storytelling and layouts go above and beyond anything you’d expect from the secondary Spider-man comic in 1981. It looks really great in black and white too. As well as Cloak and Dagger Mantlo also gives us s the first appearance of the guy who’d go on to become the Steel Spider and the Debra Whitman storyline where she thinks she is going insane because of her belief that Peter Parker is Spider-Man.
(SPOILER: He is!).