Web of Spider-Man

Web of Spider-man #4 consists of three short stories:

Gauntlet Origins: Mysterio by Fred Van Lente and Barry Kitson.
This story was pretty good. It is set right before Mysterio becomes a criminal, showing us what inspired him and in the meantime giving us an unexpected Dr. Strange story. I liked this one quite a bit.

The Spectacular Spider-Girl in They First Make Mad by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz.
This story ends the "goblin" arc. It is not great.

Hammerhead in Western Promises by Frank Tieri and Eric Canete.
This is a really good short issue. It gives Hammerhead a bit more depth and I also like that the title is a little homage to the great movie "Eastern Promises".

Web of Spider-man #5 consists of three short stories:

Gauntlet Origins: Vulture by Fred Van Lente and Francis Portela.
Another solid story. Van Lente does a great job of making his villains be much more than their caricatures. Adrian Toomes (the vulture) really seems like a very intelligent guy in this story. Quite good and at the same time quite dark. I liked it.

The Spectacular Spider-Girl in Choosing Sides by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz.
The more I read Spider-Girl, the more I wish I was able to skip the story and read the next. For some reason, even if I don't like something, I have a tough time not reading it, if it is inside a book I care about. Something I should fix if I want to read more anthologies.

Ben Reilly in Nobody by J.M. DeMatteis and Chad Hardin.
A pretty good story. It must be tough being a clone, feeling like you are nobody. This short story explores that as well as you can in 10 pages. I want more Ben Reilly stories.

Web of Spider-man #8 by Fred Van Lente and Javier Rodriguez with a back up story called "Un Nuovo Inizio" by J.M. DeMatteis and Val Semeiks.

In this issue, Web of Spider-man changed its format. In a way losing its anthology status and just giving Van Lente a comic where he can tell Spider-man stories. This issue starts the first part of "The Extremist". The Extremist is a villain that believes that the world is black and white, either you are good or your bad. He hates gray areas and wants to eliminate them. In this issue he attacks a pundit who bashes superheroes. He believes superheroes have made the right choices and that it is wrong to humanize them and make them seem less good, in other words, he hates people putting in gray areas when they should be all white.
I liked the story a lot, looking forward to the rest of the arc.

The backup story was another Ben Reilly story. It was really good. It is nice to have a Peter Parker character which is not as balanced morally as the normal Peter Parker. Ben Reilly is very happy with a new beginning, shaping his life in nice ways, living in Rome. However, his lack of past creates troubles when he starts "dating" a daughter of a powerful man. It is interesting how Ben reacts to this. I really want to read more about Ben Reilly, I hope they put more back up stories about him in the series.

Web of Spider-man #9 by Fred Van Lente, Javier Rodriguez, Patrick Olliffe and Nick Dragotta with a back up story called "Jackpot Reflections" by Marc Guggenheim and Sana Takeda.

The main issue is the second part of "The Extremist". The issue explains a bit about the past about The Extremist. It is a really good villain. He is powerful and interestingly, his motives, while crazy, aren't specially evil. What he does is evil, but he really thinks he is doing the right thing. His motivations are not greed or power, they are quite different. This might be the best new Spider-man villain in over 10 years. Spidey had amazing villains in its early run, but it seems that most Spidey villains were created back then, whenever a new one would come, it wouldn't be a very good villain.
I have to talk about the art too, as I liked it a lot. The last third of the issue is drawn by Nick Dragotta and I thought he is excellent at drawing Spider-man. Javier Rodriguez did a great job with the last issue and with half of this issue, but I liked Dragotta more (of course, I am not sure how well he draws Peter, but he is excellent at drawing Spidey.

The back up tale was pretty good, even though it was about a character I care almost nothing about (Jackpot). I thought Jackpot had died in a Spidey Annual a couple of years ago and I don't even remember who she was. I just know that it teased us for a while making us think she was Mary Jane. Even with my indifference for the character, the cool drawings and the self contained story entertained me quite a bit. It ends in a "To be continued" and I want to know what happens (although, I prefer having a Ben Reilly story in the next issue).

Overall, I am glad I have been reading this series. The new format is excellent as now I get to read Fred Van Lente writing Spidey stories instead of just little origin stories about villains. Looking forward to more from this series.