Why am I blue?

Spider-Man: Blue #3

Written by Jeph Loeb

Art by Tim Sale

I've written in the past about the team of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale. They're the guys who brought us great noir-infused Batman stories like The Long Halloween and Dark Victory. When the duo made the jump to Marvel to do a series of color-themed miniseries with the House of Idea's greatest creations, I was on board from the get-go. Daredevil: Yellow fleshed out a period in Matt Murdock's fictional life I'd never read much about, and I was pleased to learn Spider-Man: Blue would do the same for Peter Parker's college years.

I've since gone back and read this classic era of Spider thanks to Marvel's Essential reprints, but at the time, I'd never appreciated the complexity of the Peter Parker/Harry Osborn relationship. On the surface, this series looks like it’s about Peter's relationship with Gwen leading up to her death at the hands of the Green Goblin, but it really veers more into Mary Jane and Harry territory. Whenever Harry and Pete interact, Loeb and Sale like to emphasize a building sadness within Peter's friend, often confining him to the corner of a large, shadowy panel to stress his growing disconnect from the rest of humanity. The last page of this issue does this nicely, showcasing a Harry that is almost delusional in wanting to see his dream double date scenario (Pete ends up with Gwen, and Harry with M.J.) play out.

The framing device for this series is a built-in tearjerker, with Pete recording a message to his long-dead girlfriend Gwen. Even casual Spider-Fans know at this point that she will eventually be thrown to her death in front of Spidey and the ripples from that event still inform the character's decisions to this day.

Sale's character art rubs some folks the wrong way, but I always applaud his use of multiple body types and his old-school cartooning sensibilities. His characters aren't always "on model", but they're always expressive and unique from one another. He uses body language a great deal in this issue, particularly with the sultry Ms. Watson. The book springs to life in the way all colorful, costumed hero books should.

Loeb's dialogue is good but not great. The art evokes a certain period, mainly the time from which these stories first occurred and were published, but the dialogue is loose enough to make it a "timeless" affair. Not necessarily timeless in a good way: timelessness can also reflect the loss of identity. Spidey's quips feel like the classic banter we're used to from Stan Lee and Gerry Conway on first read, but this time the words just fell flat to me. The art side of things still holds up though. Loeb gets a head start with the drama here, since hinging everything on what we know will eventually happen with Gwen is the comic book equivalent of going for "cheap heat".

Our freak of the week for this issue is the classic Spidey rogue, Curt Conners a.k.a. The Lizard. Spidey's clash with the Lizard in this issue is an abbreviated affair, and serves only to give Spidey something to do while juggling his romantic entanglements.

This back issue dive has me wondering what happened with that Captain America: White project that was supposed to be the next in the Marvel color series from Loeb and Sale. Whatever became of that? Did it come out at some point and pass me by?

Anyhoo, thanks for reading!