Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Primer
In the mid-2000s, the work being done on Amazing Spider-Man by J. Michael Straczynski was making big changes to the titular hero. The nature of Peter Parker’s spider-powers was being put into question and a mystical spin was being added to it. This resulted in a massive storyline titled The Other: Evolve or Die, which would end with Peter Parker gaining new abilities and set the tone for the character for years to come — or at least that was the plan at first, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Running for 25 issues, FNSM was almost entirely written by long time Spider-Man writer Peter David. At the time, David hadn’t written Spider-Man for quite a while by this point and fans were clamoring to have him back on the book. David primarily worked with artists Mike Wieringo, Roger Cruiz, Todd Nauck, Scot Eaton. The only time’s issues weren’t written by David was during the Other story arc when writing duties were shared with J. Michael Straczynski and Reginald Hudlin, who also wrote Amazing Spider-Man and Marvel Knights: Spider-Man respectively.
The end result? I’d say it was mixed. Peter David has always been great at doing down-to-Earth Spider-Man stories but on the other hand I also think that this run came during the transition from writers setting up long-running plot arcs (as was the case in the 70s until the 90s) and writers doing smaller self-contained arcs. It seems that Peter had grander ideas for FNSM that didn’t pan out because of the changing environment at Marvel. It also seems to me that there was probably a lot of editorial whimsy going on at Marvel at the time.
My only complaint about The Other storyline (in terms of the parts that appear in FNSM) is the sudden return of Flash Thompson. Prior to this, Thompson was in a car accident in Peter Parker: Spider-Man that left him in a vegetative state through the whole run of Spectacular Spider-Man (vol. 2). His miraculous recovery is not really explained. David incorrectly states that Flash was in a coma this whole time. When Flash was released from the hospital he was basically braindead with no chance of coming back to normal. Even if you were to accept that Flash could magically snap out of being in that state, it seems really flimsy that he’s able to get a job at Midtown High, particularly since Flash crashed an Oscorp truck into the front of the building and that the official cause of the accident was impaired driving. I somehow doubt that the principal at Midtown High would hire that person. I’m not against them bringing back Flash Thompson, I’m just saying the execution wasn’t well thought out, especially since his role as a gym teacher at Midtown High later proves to be shortlived. Having him forget everything after high school also seemed needlessly pointless since other writers quickly had him back to normal post One More Day. There are probably reasons why Flash’s time at Midtown didn’t last very long, but we’ll cover those as we move along.
When the Other ended, it seemed like Peter David was trying to develop stories that he liked to tell but then had to suddenly change gears and focus on stories that tied into Civil War from issues 11 to 16. Those were actually quite well done since it was in Peter David’s wheelhouse since the focus of the Spider-Books (other than Amazing) was to dive into how Peter Parker unmasking affected people in his life. I particularly enjoy the three-issue arc Taking Wing, which revisited the character of Deborah Whitman. Whitman was last seen back in the 1980s in Spectacular Spider-Man. The girl struggled with all sorts of issues and her last appearance was a story where Peter Parker totally gaslit her. So to see her turn around and write a tell-all book about dating Peter Parker was kind of poetic. We all think about how Peter is a nice guy who always tries to do the right thing, but he was absolutely fucking terrible to Debrah, so it’s nice to see him pay for some of that.
With Civil War over, all the Spider-Man books participated in the Back in Black event that saw Spider-Man wearing his black-and-white costume again. The whole thing was a gimmick partially done to promote the release of Spider-Man 3 which featured both Spider-Man in a black costume, as well as the Sandman and Venom as villains. While other writers seemed to write whatever they wanted during this period, I feel as though Peter David was the only writer shouldered with having to do Sandman stories. So in the middle of having to also try and wrap up his plot about Spider-Man 2211 while also trying to cram a story that looks into the Sandman’s past relationship with his father. Then, after that, since editorial was hitting the reset button on all the changes made since The Other, I feel Peter David was also shouldered to rush a conclusion to Spider-Man’s battle with the Other itself. It all seems rushed to the conclusion that it doesn’t seem satisfying in the slightest and it makes the whole point of The Other pointless. At least it all seemed pointless until Dan Slott went back and made sense and bridge everything that happened in The Other into the post Brand New Day Spider-Man when he did Spider-Verse.
Peter David’s final story on Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man was possibly the best tale to come out of the whole “Spider-Man Unmasked” story, and that was a “final” confrontation between Peter Parker and J. Jonah Jameson where all the years of Jonah’s antagonism were dealt with in. Finally, Peter and Jonah were given the opportunity to hash out their differences without a secret identity to stand in the way of Peter expressing how he really felt.
Of course, after that, the title was hijacked for One More Day and Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man was canned along with most other Spider-Man titles in favor of publishing Amazing Spider-Man three times a month. I’ve already said plenty about One More Day elsewhere.
Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man was revived in 2019 for a second volume that only ran for 14 issues.
