by Randy Lander

SPIDER-MAN UNLIMITED #3 Recommended (8/10) Marvel Comics "Preventative Medicine" Writer: Tom McLaughlin Artist: Scott Kolins Letters: Dave Sharpe "6th" Writer: Brandon Thomas Pencils: Ale Garza Inks: Sean Parsons Colors: Chris Walker Letters: Dave Sharpe Editors: Teresa Focarile, Marc Sumerak & Tom Brevoort Price: $2.99 US/$4.25 CAN It's supposed to be really difficult to write short comics stories. I mean, it is difficult, it's something I've done, and it's really hard to pull it off. So how is it that in three issues of Spider-Man Unlimited, we really haven't had a bad short story from almost entirely new writers? Oh, there have been some that were a bit weak, some that I'd even call mediocre, but outright train wreck bad we haven't seen, and downright good (even great) we have. This issue features two good ones, both with laugh-out-loud moments, both with interesting observations on what it means to be Spider-Man and both by new writers. They also feature work by veteran artists, and while I'm a bigger Scott Kolins fan than I am an Ale Garza fan, I think this is my favorite of all of Garza's work that I've seen. I'm shocked to be admitting this, but based on these first three issues, if Marvel were to do a Spider-Man Unlimited trade, I think I'd buy it. Some of the best, most accessible Spider-Man stories on the market are going on right here. "Preventative Medicine" is a story that isn't really about Spider-Man. Instead, it's about a kid trying to decide between doing what's right and doing what's wrong. He knows the difference, but choosing the wrong thing wouldn't make him just a bad guy. McLaughlin's story shows how the pressures of life and the temptations of doing something the wrong way can overpower even a basically decent person, and I had no trouble buying into the notion that this kid might consider doing something fairly terrible in order to get something he sees as unattainable. Then we see how Spider-Man prevented the crime, not by intervening but just by being there in the city, and it's a lovely counter-argument to the notion that costumed heroes only deal with costumed foes, and don't really have any sort of preventative or practical effect on the crime in their universes. The story is accompanied by Scott Kolins's artwork, and as anyone who has been reading my columns can tell you, I'm a fan. To be honest, after a mostly forgettable Avengers run, I was starting to think that maybe I was just a fan of Kolins on The Flash, but this story restored my faith a little. He creates some realistic characters for the story, serves up some perfect comedic timing (the laugh-out-loud moment in this story comes from a visual) and demonstrates the threat of a pocketknife and the power and speed of Spider-Man. All of which are done mostly without words, and I credit McLaughlin with also learning one of the most important lessons of comic writing early: Let your artist tell a story too, don't always talk over their work. Brandon Thomas is slightly less a newbie to the field, having scripted a Youngblood comic, and he's a fellow Internet journalist, writing a column over at Silver Bullet Comics. His story focuses in on Spidey's "spider sense" and explores a facet of it that I hadn't thought about, how it makes Spider-Man as aware of things as Daredevil in his way. We usually think of the spider sense as just a sort of neat gimmick that helps him fight, but Thomas's story reminds us that it's sort of a limited precognition, and that can be a curse as well as a blessing. Thomas also provides some terrifically witty dialogue, especially Peter's analysis of his fight with the Vulture, and the exploration of what it must feel like when one of your archfoes is elderly cracked me up even as it was a very insightful thing to notice. Based on this story, I'd say Thomas is a guy to watch out for in the future: If he can be this impressive with a 10-pager, I'd love to see what he could do with an issue. Or a story arc. Thomas is paired with Ale Garza and Sean Parsons, and while Garza's work hasn't typically been my thing, he does a pretty good job of capturing the kinetic energy of the Vulture/Spider-Man fight. His characters are very stylized, even cartoony, with a Peter Parker who looks like Kia Asamiya and a vulture who looks like a shrunken prune. However, it's a little less crazy out there than his work on something like Ninja Boy, and I find that I like this cross between exaggerated and realistic much better. Email Randy Lander comments about this review.