THE UNBOXING - JUNE 2019

Squeaking in just under the wire, and thanks primarily to a Comixology Spider-Man sale coupled with a Comixology BOGO ("Buy One, Get One") coupon code, we have The Unboxing for June -- an all-digital, all-Spidey affair.

I took advantage of the afore-mentioned sale and coupon to fill in some holes in my digital Spider-Man library. Some of these I own already, but I'm always up for getting digital "backup copies" of books I own when they can be had dirt cheap -- plus, if we're honest, I do more of my comic reading on my iPad anyway these days. It's more like the physical copies are the backups at this point.

Anyway, to start, I grabbed some late eighties/early nineties Epic Collections, which I love since they're collecting the long David Michelinie run that I grew up on in elementary and middle school: KRAVEN'S LAST HUNT, VENOM, COSMIC ADVENTURES, RETURN OF THE SINISTER SIX, and ROUND ROBIN.

Then, from my beloved post-Clone Saga era, I grabbed SPIDER-MAN BY TODD DEZAGO & MIKE WIERINGO vol. 1, SPIDER-HUNT, and IDENTITY CRISIS. Marvel has been spotty in collecting this Spider-Man era, which is kind of frustrating. They did the entire Clone Saga in a proper reading order, and they've done the John Byrne/Howard Mackie relaunch from 1999 more or less in its entirety. But the two years in between have received only the above collections, plus a HOBGOBLIN LIVES collection that included a few issues of SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN from the era as well. To my recollection, that's about it, but I hold out hope that someday, the entire post-Clone Saga/pre-Byrne period will make it into reprints (i.e., all four core books, plus SPIDER-MAN UNLIMITED, annuals, one-shots, mini-series, and so forth in a proper reading order).

Speaking of John Byrne, the final bunch of items from this month's digital Unboxing is a little grab bag, including Byrne's oft-maligned SPIDER-MAN: CHAPTER ONE. I actually recall enjoying certain aspects of this when I read it way back in college. Mainly I appreciated Byrne running through the first year's worth of Spider-Man stories as if they had all been planned out in advance. That said, there were some questionable decisions in the book as well, and I was annoyed that Marvel briefly had it overwrite Spider-Man's original continuity. Nonetheless, it is something I want to revisit someday, and it's perfect as a "digital only" purchase, since I have no real desire to own a physical copy.

Closing things out are the other random bits: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN MASTERWORKS vol. 20, and SPIDER-MAN: THE NEWSPAPER STRIPS vol. 1 and vol. 2. You'll recall how much I loved the Stan Lee/John Romita run on the Spidey strips when I read them here a couple years back. Those editions were published by IDW's Library of American Comics imprint, but have never been released digitally. However, these editions, which were released by Marvel a few years prior to IDW's release, are just fine with me for digital purposes.

FYI, the BOGO coupon has expired, but the Spider-Man sale runs into mid-July, so all the books mentioned above should still be available at a discount for a couple more weeks, for those who are interested!