Spider-Man: Life Story By Chip Zdarsky & Mark Bagley

[HypnoHustler]

* annoyed benjy survived
* enjoyed the integration of superior
* symbiote helping peter was great
* glad that “reign” wasn’t the influential story here
* this issue maintained the quality of the series

Why are you annoyed Benjy survived? Do you enjoy Peter’s suffering that much?

[boots]

Why are you annoyed Benjy survived? Do you enjoy Peter’s suffering that much?

yes, that’s exactly why. i also park in disabled spots on occasion

[Ursalink]

* annoyed benjy survived
* enjoyed the integration of superior
* symbiote helping peter was great
* glad that “reign” wasn’t the influential story here
* this issue maintained the quality of the series

With "Reign" you mean "Dark Reign"? If you do, I believe "Dark Reign" was combined with "Secret Wars" to explain how Doom took over the world after the Civil War.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

With "Reign" you mean "Dark Reign"? If you do, I believe "Dark Reign" was combined with "Secret Wars" to explain how Doom took over the world after the Civil War.

I think boots is referring to Spider-Man Reign. An earlier attempt to imagine Old Man Peter.

* annoyed benjy survived
* enjoyed the integration of superior
* symbiote helping peter was great
* glad that “reign” wasn’t the influential story here
* this issue maintained the quality of the series

There's actually some reference to Reign, that white-out sequence where he talks to MJ for instance.

aside from that, i agree.

[Lukmendes]

Now here's a thought. Peter said all the old guard heroes were dead. Seems a bit odd then, that the one new hero Peter mentioned was Kamala. Who shouldn't even have her powers if the terrigen mist incident never happened (Black Bolt won't have been around to blow up the bomb that created the cloud).

Kamala just seems to get her powers regardless, even in a setting that it wouldn't make sense, for example, in Zdarsky's Two-in-One run, he had Kamala with powers from that other universe, where Galactus Trilogy had Doom killing Galactus, seems pretty unlikely that the terrigen mist was spread around the Earth in that universe, but we have Kamala there anyways.

You can say that Life Story Gwen is different compared to Lee-Ditko Gwen, but then that's true of Lee-Romita Gwen as well, who is a jarringly different (and inferior) version of that character. On the other hand, I think Life Story Osborn is more consistent to Lee-Ditko Osborn than Lee-Romita's lame dad version.

I don't really see much of Ditko Osborn in this, because he's just a manipulative guy using Harry like a puppet, that's the characterization he got afterwards, in the Ditko-era, while his interactions with Harry are limited, he does seem to treat Harry better, even if still rude in at least one occasion, pretty sure it's even pointed out by another character that he's a nice father.

Of course, since this story is about Spidey overall, then Zdarsky couldn't use early Osborn's characterization, since "better father Osborn" would change everything about his relationship with Harry.

Either way, Life Story was pretty good, biggest problem with it is that it's short and you need to know Spidey-lore well to know what the hell is going on, also I don't see the point of keeping Gwen-Clone alive and dating Ben, since she didn't show up afterwards, nor was she mentioned, was also odd Zdarsky had Peter and Jessica Jones be dating after MJ moved out, it adds nothing to the story and it only makes it weird how Peter moves on immediately, Peter manipulating Ben by not telling him what was really going on was really off putting... Oh well, good story, but has some issues.

[Noronha]

Favorite moments all had to do with the symbiote. Writers often seem to ignore that the symbiote actually likes Peter, in spite of how they fight most of the time. Its a relationship with ups and downs.

This!

Writers tend to forget that the symbiote originally saved Peter´s life after being rejected!
The way that Zdarsky pays homage to that is simply beautiful and speaks to how strong Peter´s morals and beliefs are.