Spectacular Spider-Man: Brand New Day #1 is Pure MCU Synergy With All The Pros and Cons That Entails (Review)

Spider-Man is about to head into theaters with the beginning of what is almost certainly another trilogy, Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Of course, this means two words that every fans of Marvel’s comics hate to think about: MCU synergy. On the one hand, it’s cool to get a lot of projects starring characters from the movies, especially more obscure ones. On the other, it’s rarely anything good and doesn’t actually being in any new readers in appreciable numbers. The House of Ideas announced numerous projects meant to tie-in to the movie, but the most blatant is Spectacular Spider-Man: Brand New Day #1. It’s also the one with the most potential as it returns legendary Spider-Man writer Dan Slott to the character he wrote for years.

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Slott gets a lot of flack from fans mad about “One More Day” and all it wrought, but he’s honestly a very good Spider-Man writer who gets how to tell stories with the character and his world. Joining him is artist Marcus To, a great artist who never got the big break he deserves and who worked with Slott on Superman Unlimited for a few issues earlier this year. This comic has all of the elements of a good story, but it also does a lot of things that are honestly pretty annoying.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Pros	Cons
Slott is an excellent Spider-Man writer and nails this new version of the Wall-Crawler while giving readers an action-packed story	The MCU synergy drips from this book and it makes even the good parts seem kind of blah
To goes with a more classic Spider-Man style in this one and it looks great	Slott doesn’t writer Punisher well, giving us the most cliche version of the characer
Well-paced with a lot of potential for the future	It’s going to remind readers of the most hated Spider-Man story of the last twenty years and somehow makes it worse in certain ways

Slott Gives Readers a Good Spider-Man Story That’s Weighed Down With Too Much Baggage

I don’t care what anybody says, Dan Slott writes good Spider-Man stories. He’s a writer who gets the character and it shows every time he writes him. You can dislike some of the choices he made, or more accurately the ones forced on him, but he does write engaging stories with everyone’s favorite friendly neighborhood hero. If you judge this issue completely on the merits of the story and nothing else, it’s pretty good. It’s a standard kind of Spider-Man story, with him going after criminals and trying to sell pictures of the Wall-Crawler to The DB, the modern gossip rag The Daily Bugle in this universe, before getting embroiled in something bigger. It’s exciting and there’s cool action, and you’ll enjoy it if that’s all you judge it on. It’s not groundbreaking or perfect, but it’s a solid story, although the Punisher is the most bargain basement version of the character.

However, this is a book set in a new canon, introducing a new version of Spider-Man, one that is much closer to the MCU version of things. This is an MCU-ified world and from the moment I saw that change, I knew that this comic wasn’t for actual comic readers. Introducing a new version of Spider-Man to get movie fans in the door feels kind of manipulative and it colors the whole issue for me. This book is basically Slott getting a chance to do “Brand New Day” – the publishing initiative that came after “One More Day” – and there’s really no reason for it to exist other than fooling MCU fans into buying a book.

To Channels the Spider-Man Great of the Past

One of the problems with modern Marvel is that their artists mostly have the same style, other than some of the bigger, more well-known ones. Marcus To has always been one of these, but he’s also shown that his work is better than the standard Marvel house style artists. For this book, after Marcos Martin kicks the book off with an excellent origin page, To shifts his style to one that feels more at home in a Bronze Age comic and it feels right for this book.

To’s never been the flashiest penciler and there are no real mind-blowing pages in this book. However, we do get solid action scenes, deft character acting, nice detail, and strong linework. I’m trying to damn him with faint praise because I honestly like this book’s art a lot because it’s low key and kind of understated in a lot of ways. It fits the tone of what this book is – something that’s supposed to be for people who don’t read a lot of comics. To keeps it simple and it’s definitely something that works in this book favor.

I’m conflicted on this one because on the one hand, this is a good read. Slott and To capture a nice flavor for their Spider-Man and I’m sure this book will give readers some good stories in the future. However, the fact that it’s so blatantly an MCU cash-in ruins a lot of it for me. If you don’t mind that sort of thing or are coming from the MCU, then you’ll like this one. If you do, then it’s not something that’s going to appeal to you very much.

Spectacular Spider-Man: Brand New Day #1 is on sale now.

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