I usually get comics every 3 weeks or so. Always when there’s a new issue of whatever the current hot series is. At the moment that means Civil War. Supposedly it’s selling more issues than anything has in a decade, which I believe if the number of people in my store yesterday is any indication.
I haven’t had time to read through my whole stack from yesterday but, aside from Civil War 3 being predictably excellent, The Sensational Spider-Man 28 is my early pick for best of the week (well, it came out last week). Ignore that the cover would be great if it didn’t make Peter look a tad creepy. The story inside is about a kid who just found out his favorite teacher is Spider-Man. It’s a one-shot issue that requires no set-up to get into, the art is great, and the story is grounded and just a little touching.
Back to Civil War talk (no spoilers, don’t worry)… If you go back and read Grant Morrison’s issues of JLA, there’s suddenly a part where Superman is Superman Blue, in the brief time when DC was messing with the character and gave him new powers. All that stuff happened in the pages of Superman’s many books, but JLA had to reflect the change to the character, even though it ended up being a temporary thing. There’s a moment in Civil War 3 where a character kind of points out that Spider-Man is wearing a new costume. It’s a bit of a throw-away line that’s mostly there for the benefit of readers who don’t know that the guy in the ugly yellow and red suit is Spider-Man. Basically everyone hates the new costume which he’s been wearing for the past few months, and Marvel’s come out and said that he’ll be back in his classic duds before too long. Now, I do agree that giving him his “Iron Spidey” suit does help to show his tie to Iron Man, that Peter’s grateful for everything that Tony has done for him and all that. My guess (I’d bet money on it) is that in issue 5 or 6 of Civil War Spider-Man will break away from the pro-registration side, join up with Captain America, and put back on his classic costume. That would be a good, story-driven way to get him back into his traditional attire. If they don’t do that, I feel like five years down the road, whenever new people pick up and read the story, they’re going to say, “now why was Spider-Man wearing that awful costume?”, just like you do with the Superman Blue period.