Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Spider-Man: Blue

Top positive review

With Great Power comes Great Art and Story

Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2020

This is a review of the paperback, 2017 printing of Spider-Man: Blue by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale.

This is it! This is THE definitive Spider-Man story. It’s beautifully drawn, written, and crafted, and the final two pages have never once failed to make me cry. It’s a Spider-Man volume that features the Green Goblin, the Lizard, the Rhino, new and old Vultures, along with another (plot sensitive) villain, while still being deeply focused on exploring the love dynamic between Peter, MJ, and Gwen before and after Gwen’s death.

Loeb and Sale are a phenomenal team [further reading: their work together on Batman: Long Halloween, Dark Victory, and Catwoman: When In Rome, and Jeph Loeb’s writing on Batman: Hush] and they bring a familiarity and ease to Spider-Man that harkens back to the good ole days of the Stan Lee/Steve Ditko/John Romita era of the 1960s. That is to say, classic Spider-Man stories.

This is intentional! In the afterword section of this volume, Sale describes the process of trying to replicate the allure and magic of how Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy were drawn by Romita, while Loeb discusses the writing process of reintroducing us to the first meeting of these characters. The story unfolds as Peter sitting in his attic, addressing Gwen into a tape recorder as he reflects about their time together before her death. This is the framing device that allows Loeb and Sale to go back in time and explore these old dynamics that have been baked into pop culture history.

Spider-Man: Blue is an exploration of love, loss, and the innocence of an era of comics we don’t see much of anymore. I can’t recommend it enough.

Top critical review

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Hector

A melancholy story with classic comic art

Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2015

Spider-Man Blue follows the anniversary of the death of Gwen Stacy, and how Peter has been coping with it. As it turns out within the first few pages, he very well remembers the amount of love he felt for Gwen. While Peter deals with the pain, the rest of the story fleshes out how the two met and fell in love. It's a nice and simple story that has some fun action sequences with classic villains like Vulture, Rhino, Lizard, and more. The only dissapointment was that I wanted more of it since Peter and Gwen's relationship is one of my favorites to read about and see. The flashbacks to how they met and fell in love isn't the best and definitely could have been fleshed out and expanded. Also, there are some missed opportunities on Peter dealing with the grief such as visiting her grave or something like that.

Overall, it's a wonderful book and story that provides some good background on the Peter and Gwen relationship, but not enough to make it completely memorable.

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From the United States

Kurt Conner

Like the art, hate the book

Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2010

This is not a good book. The art is beautiful, yes, but the story just isn't there. The framing sequence is that Peter Parker misses his first love, so he records himself fondly reminiscing about their early days - while his wife is asleep or downstairs or something. It's creepy, even though MJ does make an appearance at the end to share her perspective, because it feels like I'm supposed to sympathize with someone cheating on his wife with a memory. And then the story doesn't justify the awkwardness - it leads up to Gwen's death without actually including it, and it isn't even really about the romance. It involves a few aspects of a romance with Gwen, but the flashbacks are more about Peter dating MJ and occasionally pining for Gwen. I love Gwen Stacy, I do, especially when Tim Sale gives her some sultry Lauren Bacall poses in the first half of the book, and she deserves better than this collection, stylish though it is.

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Sam Quixote

Blue me

Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2014

Jeph Loeb – the man who made having no ideas into a decades-long career in comics – brings his bafflingly successful approach to Batman over to Spider-Man. His approach? Tell stories that have already been told! With Batman, it was the fall of Harvey Dent in The Long Halloween, and Robin becoming his sidekick in Dark Victory; with Spider-Man Blue, it’s tangentially about the death of Gwen Stacy – but crucially, Gwen doesn’t die in this book. She’s also barely in the book. So wait… what the hell is this about?! Absolutely nothing.

The setup is: Peter’s feeling lonely on Valentine’s Day and decides to talk to the long-deceased Gwen via a tape recorder about the good ol’ days (even though MJ, his wife, is elsewhere in the house). That’s it. There’s no story. There’s really no point either. There’s a half-hearted story about some shadowy villain hunting Spider-Man but it’s little more than a reason for Loeb to shoehorn in some boring superhero fights between the, ahem, “romance” (plus the “mastermind” villain reveal is totally arbitrary and idiotic).

Peter fights the Rhino, the Vulture, and the Lizard (this is another Loeb staple: throw the hero’s rogues gallery at him in stages for no reason). He meets MJ. He moves into his first flat with Harry. Gwen’s in the background some of the time. Flash joins the military. Peter and Gwen hook up. That’s it.

That’s it?! Yeah. Because Loeb doesn’t know how to tell stories, he just throws characters together aimlessly and hopes that somehow a plot will emerge – and, what a surprise, it doesn’t. No, Spider-Man Blue is just a cheap excuse to shamelessly wallow in sentiment. Spider-Man’s “blue”, get it? ...

So that must mean this book really pushes the Peter/Gwen angle hard so the reader gets a strong sense of why Peter feels so pained about her absence? Nope! Gwen is barely in this book even though she is the reason for its existence; she and Peter are rarely alone and never share any meaningful moments. Their first meeting, their relationship, her death – it’s all missing. If anything, this book’s about Peter and MJ’s early days - there are actually more scenes between Peter and MJ than there are Peter and Gwen!

What is the point of having a book where Peter moons over Gwen’s death if we get no sense of their relationship? None. Because Loeb already knows the reader knows Gwen was important to Peter going into the book, he doesn’t bother doing any work here to portray why even though that’s the most important thing – the only thing really – he needed to write about.

The only idea we get as readers that Peter and Gwen were important to one another is the scene at the end when they smooch for the first time. If all you knew going into this book was that Peter and Gwen were once in love but now she’s dead, you leave the book knowing exactly the same as you did going in. No more, no less – that’s how lazily written this book is!

What Loeb gives us instead is a few glimpses of Peter staring at Gwen going “wow” before MJ shows up and he says “wow” to her (seriously, that’s an actual scene!). Because even though the book supposedly reveals how and why Peter and Gwen fell in love, based on what we see, they “fell” for one another because they’re both attractive young people and their entire “romance” is purely superficial and based on looks. Doomed, star-crossed lovers? Nah, just a pair of horny, good-looking young people! How “tragic” that they don’t get to bone each other anymore!

It’s not even a fun read – it’s the most generic, bland Spider-Man book you could ever come across. The superhero fights are dull and meaningless, the soap opera is played out, beat for beat, the same way that it has for the last 50+ years. It’s a totally irrelevant, horribly overlong Spider-Man book that offers nothing insightful or substantial to the reader.

I kinda liked Tim Sale’s art which is drawn in homage to early Spider-Man comics by Steve Ditko and John Romita. It’s the only plus about the book, but it’s not enough to make reading this worthwhile.

Spider-Man Blue blows!

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Cassandra Morrison

Main non! Nom d'une petit l'homme bleu!!!

Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2020

Spiderman RED.
Dr. Manhattan blue.

Keep your comics companies and super heroes straight.

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Sam Quixote

Blue me

Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2014

Jeph Loeb – the man who made having no ideas into a decades-long career in comics – brings his bafflingly successful approach to Batman over to Spider-Man. His approach? Tell stories that have already been told! With Batman, it was the fall of Harvey Dent in The Long Halloween, and Robin becoming his sidekick in Dark Victory; with Spider-Man Blue, it’s tangentially about the death of Gwen Stacy – but crucially, Gwen doesn’t die in this book. She’s also barely in the book. So wait… what the hell is this about?! Absolutely nothing.

The setup is: Peter’s feeling lonely on Valentine’s Day and decides to talk to the long-deceased Gwen via a tape recorder about the good ol’ days (even though MJ, his wife, is elsewhere in the house). That’s it. There’s no story. There’s really no point either. There’s a half-hearted story about some shadowy villain hunting Spider-Man but it’s little more than a reason for Loeb to shoehorn in some boring superhero fights between the, ahem, “romance” (plus the “mastermind” villain reveal is totally arbitrary and idiotic).

Peter fights the Rhino, the Vulture, and the Lizard (this is another Loeb staple: throw the hero’s rogues gallery at him in stages for no reason). He meets MJ. He moves into his first flat with Harry. Gwen’s in the background some of the time. Flash joins the military. Peter and Gwen hook up. That’s it.

That’s it?! Yeah. Because Loeb doesn’t know how to tell stories, he just throws characters together aimlessly and hopes that somehow a plot will emerge – and, what a surprise, it doesn’t. No, Spider-Man Blue is just a cheap excuse to shamelessly wallow in sentiment. Spider-Man’s “blue”, get it? ...

So that must mean this book really pushes the Peter/Gwen angle hard so the reader gets a strong sense of why Peter feels so pained about her absence? Nope! Gwen is barely in this book even though she is the reason for its existence; she and Peter are rarely alone and never share any meaningful moments. Their first meeting, their relationship, her death – it’s all missing. If anything, this book’s about Peter and MJ’s early days - there are actually more scenes between Peter and MJ than there are Peter and Gwen!

What is the point of having a book where Peter moons over Gwen’s death if we get no sense of their relationship? None. Because Loeb already knows the reader knows Gwen was important to Peter going into the book, he doesn’t bother doing any work here to portray why even though that’s the most important thing – the only thing really – he needed to write about.

The only idea we get as readers that Peter and Gwen were important to one another is the scene at the end when they smooch for the first time. If all you knew going into this book was that Peter and Gwen were once in love but now she’s dead, you leave the book knowing exactly the same as you did going in. No more, no less – that’s how lazily written this book is!

What Loeb gives us instead is a few glimpses of Peter staring at Gwen going “wow” before MJ shows up and he says “wow” to her (seriously, that’s an actual scene!). Because even though the book supposedly reveals how and why Peter and Gwen fell in love, based on what we see, they “fell” for one another because they’re both attractive young people and their entire “romance” is purely superficial and based on looks. Doomed, star-crossed lovers? Nah, just a pair of horny, good-looking young people! How “tragic” that they don’t get to bone each other anymore!

It’s not even a fun read – it’s the most generic, bland Spider-Man book you could ever come across. The superhero fights are dull and meaningless, the soap opera is played out, beat for beat, the same way that it has for the last 50+ years. It’s a totally irrelevant, horribly overlong Spider-Man book that offers nothing insightful or substantial to the reader.

I kinda liked Tim Sale’s art which is drawn in homage to early Spider-Man comics by Steve Ditko and John Romita. It’s the only plus about the book, but it’s not enough to make reading this worthwhile.

Spider-Man Blue blows!

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5 star		81%
4 star		13%
3 star		4%
2 star		1%
1 star		1%

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