Writer: Peter David

Art Team: Greg Land, Jay Leisten, Frank D’Armata, VC’s Joe Sabino

Marvel Comics

Release Date: June 12, 2019

Cover Price: $3.99

Holy sneak attack on my wallet Spider-Man! Wait, that’s not what Venom says is it?!? I kid, except about the whole sneak attack thing, because Symbiote Spider-Man has snuck its way to the top of my read pile each and every month. Something about me diving into books I normally wouldn’t look twice at lately that has me looking at things differently. You know lemonade tastes more lemony, mosquito bites don’t itch quite as much (not that we get those in snowy Buffalo too often), you know those kind of things. Anyway, lets get this back on the rails, and discuss Symbiote Spider-Man #3 shall we.

The issue begins with a clever way to tie the book back to past continuity, with a Kingpin callback to Peter Parker Spectacular Spider-Man #97, before we resume our current day story involving Mysterio’s motivations, and his efforts to get some dirt on people close to Spidey to help his cause. The pacing of this book so far has been excellent, with each issue building on what came before it, without having to recap the previous issues past events. I’m really enjoying how Peter David doesn’t hold a readers hand here and counts on them remembering what they’ve been told.

Up next is one of my favorite Spider-Man vs Electro fights in recent memory. Spider-Man takes him down quickly in a crowded theater, as they interrupt a showing of Cats, but its the fun and witty dialogue, call outs to time and place, accompanied with some good panel progression that wins me over here. It all leads to a rooftop confrontation between Spidey and Black Cat, after she brings up her conversation with Aunt May, opening the door just enough to provide Mysterio the ammunition he needs. Again David plays the script perfectly here and doesn’t force anything into the story that hasn’t been shown and played out through the series thus far.

A large majority of the rest of the issue is spent between the meeting of Black Cat and Mysetrio that I don’t want to spoil here. However as the issue begins to wind down, a bit of the ending I will spoil is that we get a fantastic Black Cat pin-up moment for the ages! Felicia attempts to right the ship with Peter which all eventually leads to a nice twist ending keeps me excited for the home stretch of this series. Greg Land and Jay Leisten do a great job with the art in this title, especially the splash pages meant to grab your attention for a few moments, even lending the story a bit of a throwback feel to the era it was originally from which I enjoy greatly.

Final Thoughts:

Overall, as a whole, Symbiote Spider-Man has been my favorite Peter Parker Spider-Man story going at the moment, with issue three doing nothing to change that in the immediate future. While initially the ‘story from the past’ concept threw me off, admittedly before trying this, the idea in no way has handicapped the story being explored here. It’s very cliche to say but the creative team here is putting out something that deserves the attention than a B level Spider book garners.