Remember Rebel Without a Cause, when James Dean screams, "You're tearing me apart!"? That's how I felt after reading this issue, only, you know, without the screaming and nice hair. Straczynski offers up a fantastic scene that makes it easy to relate to Peter Parker and ends with a unusual but clever cliffhanger. But on the other hand, the set-up and the villain are incredibly derivative and uninteresting.
Peter parker finally gets back to his apartment after his horrible trip to Los Angeles, and hunkers down for a night of well-deserved sleep. Sadly, that's when Dr. Strange decides to pay him a metaphysical visit and warns him of an approaching threat, of a supernatural creature that has decided to take on the properties of a spider wasp in order to destroy Spider-Man's life. Spidey thinks nothing of it, dismissing it as a dream. Big mistake.
Romita's art remains one of the book's strengths. His sketchy style really brings out the urban darkness that's become a core part of the book. Furthermore, he's able to convey the energy, agility and personality of the title character with seeming ease. Unfortunately, his design for the new villain is ill-defined and not terribly eye-catching, and the scene with Spidey and Doc Strange was surprisingly sketchy and a bit off when it came to the colors.
The development of a new arch-nemesis for the wallcrawler comes off as forced. Straczynski's use a haphazard plot thread from a couple of issues back isn't enough to fool the reader into thinking this is anything more than a stereotypical super-villain. The antagonist lacks any real sense of motivation and doesn't develop any semblance of personality until the last panel of the issue.
Mind you, that last panel contains some fantastic storytelling potential. Spidey has always had his problems with the press, but he's about to discover an entirely different media-related challenge in his life. And earlier in the book, Straczynski allows the reader to connect with Peter by presenting that universal quest for sleep when one's mind and body just won't allow it. It's a funny, human scene that reinforces Peter Parker as the everyman.
