“Yesterday’s” Comic> Spidey & His Amazing Friends FCBD 2024

Hey kids, an actual comic for kids!

Spidey & His Amazing Friends Free Comic Book Day 2024

Marvel Comics (2024)

WRITER: Steve Behling

LAYOUTS: Antonio Dalena & Giovanni Rigano

INKERS: Cristina Giorgilli & Cristina Stella

COLORISTS: Dario Calabria & Lucio De Giuseppe

SPIDER-MAN CREATORS: Stan Lee & Steve Ditko

Contains four stories that may be taken from a few graphic novels with short stories. The fact that this issue look like a comic with connecting panels rather than other kids comics with panels slapped into a page with a lot of unused space I’ll take it. The fact that they have to show the kids how to read the comic (left to right, so I don’t know if they think the Disney Junior age group is that stupid or that used to unflipped manga) is kind of sad. Nobody had to tell me how to read a comic book. I’m not Fredrick Wertham. All of the artists are European, Italian if I guess right. None of the American artists wanted to be involved in the “kiddie comic”, I bet. At least they try to match the 3D CG animation of the TV show. Let’s run through the stories.

“Where’s Hulk?”: Team Spidey and their other friends (for this story just Black Panther and Ms. Marvel…too bad Iron Man isn’t here but that’s personal bias) want to throw a surprise party for the Hulk, but they can’t find him. While searching they do foil Rhino, Green Goblin, and Doc Ock’s (the show uses the girl version, Caroline Trainer, aka “Lady Octopus”, but she goes by Doctor Octopus) various schemes before returning to the Spidey team’s “webquarters” where Hulk surprises them. It’s a fun little story and introduces the various characters used in the show and graphic novels at the time, though by 2024 there have been new additions of Marvel heroes and villains.

“Lost And Found”: A shorter story. Ghost Spider lost her headphones and goes searching for them but can’t find them. She helps out a truck stuck in a pothole and the driver turns out to be carrying electronics, gifting her new headphone. The dialog is what I expect from a kids comic, meaning a bit stilted. The show talks to kids on their level and while I know comic lettering only has so much room it’s a step down from the previous story.

“Tagging Along”: Trac-E, the robot spider Peter built in this show (later episodes would see Miles and Ghost Spider get their own spider-robot), wants to join Miles but Peter is worried that might give away their secret identities…despite Trac-E having tagged along with them in past episodes. So Miles uses his phone to facetime with Trac-E, allowing her to virtually tag along. No superhero stuff this one, but it’s kind of cute.

“Play Ball”: Someone is sending baseballs all over the city, causing trouble as they fly into things. It turns out to be Hulk and Rhino seeing who is the better player, but due to being superstrong they keep knocking them out of the ballpark. Spidey tells them what’s going on, and plays Rhino to get him to help clean up their mess. Again we have the stunted dialog. They use contractions on the show, Steve. This looks like it was written by Commander Data. Not AI, specifically Commander Data. At least it’s superhero-connected.

Points to the comic for having a complete adventure, but four short adventures with stunted dialog and not even the level of superheroing the show this ties into makes for a dull comic overall. The kiddies might enjoy the art but they’re better off watching the show if they have Disney Channel/Junior or Disney+ access.