“I’m the only Spider-Man who didn’t get a cool themed car.”
Spider-Man: The Manga #31
FINAL ISSUE (translated, anyway–the manga had a few stories left in the final volume)
Marvel Comics (June, 1999)
WRITER/ARTIST: Ryoichi Ikegami
TRANSLATION: Mutsumi Masuda
RETOUCH/PRODUCTION: Dano Ink Studios
COVER COLORIST: Frank A. Kadar
EDITOR: Dan Nakrosis
A young girl is mistreated wherever she goes, and for some reason she’s setting off Yu’s spider-sense. He follows her hoping to figure out why, and frankly kind of stalkerish, but they stumble upon a kidnapping and are forced to go with the kidnappers and the victim to a dilapidated house. And that’s where Marvel stopped translating the manga…in the final volume of the series and on a cliffhanger.
If Marvel was going to stop translating these, and they already skipped a whole story, they should have stopped with the previous issue. It would have been a good story to go out on. Instead we cut off at the start of a new arc and it feels like a huge mistake.
Meanwhile Yu does not look very heroic stalking this girl, and she knows he’s following her, because his spider-sense was going off. Maybe she does end up being like the Winter Woman given how she’s treated, where her sorry creates a dangerous power. This is a writer known for horror and Japanese horror uses that theme often from what little I’ve seen of it. (Again, not into horror, but there is a strong horror atmosphere down to the sound effects translated.) However, this was the wrong way to approach it and now he can’t openly use his powers without his costume because of the other victim…and neither of them would have been there had he left her alone, been more stealthy, found a less scary way to approach her, or been in his Spider-Man costume.
If you go to collect this series in this form rather than the untranslated manga stop at issue #30. Otherwise you’re ending in the wrong spot.
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