Now I will just quickly say that I really enjoyed Coming Home, but I need to say more about it than that, so I guess this is a slight spoiler warning, I am not going to say how it ends but I am going to talk about plot details about how it starts and things that happen within it. Basically it starts with a Peter Parker who has been left by his wife and is feeling the effects of it, he is kind of lost and he ends up looking at the high school he used to attend as a kid, he see's that it has got even rougher and that life is even harder for the students who go there than it was in his day. The whole of the book seems to be about a lost Parker trying to put his mind and his life back together, if you have ever found yourself lost at a crossroad in life wondering who you are, what you want, and you need then you will be able to relate with this book. Reading it feels like slipping back in to your favourite pair of worn shoes, if like me you could understand and relate to the early Spider-man comics with the teenage Spider-man and you have now grown up and have experienced a life crisis which has made you stop dead in your tracks and re-evaluate your life then you will love this. There is a character in it who plays a sort of mentor role who takes basic Spider-man knowledge ,things we and Parker have always assumed to be true and just throws everything up in the air.
The book deals with subjects like bullying and pain in a surprisingly intelligent way. I happen to have a soft spot for any form of media which can talk about how tough school is and bullying with a level head and with something to say on the subject. Maybe this is because of the fact that I know what it was like to be picked on as a youngster, but I have also spent a lot of time working for a charity helping bullied children. Peter Parker has always been there for those of us who felt like outsiders, those who were bullied and pushed to far, but he always came with a message, he had the power but he never used it for vengeance, I think Coming Home has its own message and it would be that no mater what changes and who or what a person looses there is always a way to move forward a way and a reason to carry on.
I would give Coming Home an 8 out of 10. I would recommend it at full price but at £1.99 all I can say is grab it, grab it now, in fact grab 2 one for you and one for a friend so you can immediately read it and then discuss it. I have to admit though that I probably wont be buying any more of the graphic novels in this series for the simple reason that once they go up to there regular price of £9.99 I would rather just pay what I have to pay and buy the graphic novels I personally want to read instead of what is the current book in this set.
This run of Spiderman was very strong, especially with John Romita Jr's amazing art. Like a lot of Marvel comics of this era however, I personally feel that it all got mucked up once the huge crossovers started up and sucked the individual titles (such as Amazing Spiderman) into the events.
ReplyDeleteI sold a lot of my comics but I still have my UK reprints that cover this run of Spiderman by the great J. Straczynski.