SPIDER-MAN: LIFELINE #1 - 3

"PIECES OF FATE" | "SNAKES IN THE GRASS" | "A TASTE OF INFINITY"
Writer/Storytellers/Penciler: "Fabulous" Fabian Nicieza & Steve "The Dude" Rude
Inker: Bob Wiacek | Letterer: John Costanza | Colorist: Greg Wright
Assistant Editor: Brian Smith | Editor: Ralph Macchio | Editor-in-Chief: Joe Quesada

The earliest days of Joe Quesada's reign at Marvel feature some curiosities -- stories which fly in the face of the philosophies he and his corporate overlord, Bill Jemas, forced onto creators and readers. SPIDER-MAN: LIFELINE is one of these. Though Quesada had been Marvel's editor-in-chief for over a year by the time this series was published, it seems pretty clear it was greenlit under the previous administration. Clue number one is that it's drawn by Steve Rude, a notoriously slow artist, so Marvel probably wanted to give him a lot of lead time to complete these three issues. But beyond that, LIFELINE is edited by Ralph Macchio, who had turned over the stewardship of the Spider-Man comics to Axel Alonso only a few months earlier. It's written with third-person narrative captions and thought balloons galore. It's heavy on continuity, being a direct sequel to, and featuring numerous reference to, a storyline in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN from more than thirty years earlier. All these things had been (or would soon be) outlawed by Quesada and Jemas in their attempts to make Marvel's comics as bland and awful as possible -- and as a result, when it was published, LIFELINE was breath of fresh air in what was fast becoming an unreadable and downright unenjoyable Marvel line.

But! I don't want to start this thing off on a negative note. I mean, I'll take every possible opportunity to talk about how utterly wretched the majority of Marvel's output was circa 2001 - 2005ish, and how, for the most part, the comics have never recovered from the harm Quesada and Jemas did when they took over -- which is why I had absolutely no choice whatsoever but to write the preceding paragraph -- but from here on out, we're going positive.

I've noted here more than once that I revere the Stan Lee/John Romita run on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. Taking Steve Ditko's creation of the character, his cast, and his villains for granted, it is Romita's version of Spider-Man, in collaboration with Lee, that I consider definitive. And for my money, the apex of that duo's run on the character is the "stone tablet" saga. It ran for a whopping ten issues (if you include the two-part coda featuring the Lizard), which was pretty unusual at the time. It followed Spider-Man's travails as he struggled to keep an ancient tablet out of the hands of the underworld's top gangsters, including the Kingpin and Silvermane, the latter of whom believes the tablet holds a key to eternal youth. In the end, Silvermane drinks a formula derived from the tablet's inscription and dies when he de-ages to nothingness.

TALES OF THE THE TEEN TITANS #48 & #49

"THE RECOMBATANTS!"
Co-Creators/Co-Editors: Marv Wolfman & George Pérez | Writer: Marv Wolfman
Guest Penciler: Steve Rude | Guest Inker: Al Gordon
Penciler (epilogues): George Pérez | Inker (epilogues): Mike DeCarlo
Letterer: Todd Klein | Letterer (epilogues): Ben Oda | Colorist: Adrienne Roy

The Plot: A group of genetically engineered artificial teenagers named the Recombatants escape from a Dayton Industries facility near Las Vegas. In New York, Cyborg mulls over some new procedure S.T.A.R. Labs is developing which could change his life, but is soon summoned to Titans' Tower.

Nightwing, Starfire, Cyborg, Wonder Girl, and Jericho head to Nevada to round the Recombatants up. The Titans bring the Recombatants back to the lab, where the scientists who created them explain their intention to destroy these "prototypes". The Recombatants make a run for it and the Titans pursue, but the teenagers choose to take their own lives, destroying the power core that would have allowed the Dayton scientists to create more Recombatants, in the process.

Back in New York, Changeling shows Jillian around Dayton Manor and is reprimanded by his stepfather over his offering Donna and Terry the use of the house for their wedding. Meanwhile, Terry receives word that his ex-wife wants to speak with him and worries about her intentions. At Titans' Tower, Jericho attempts to visit Raven but she forces him to leave.