Byrne’s approach to retelling the first “year” of Amazing Spider-Man issues is pretty simple, at least from what’s going on here. Gut the teenage Peter Parker drama and put in all Spider-Man and supervillains. Given how much of the originals Lee spent on the teenage drama, I imagine it had something to do with their popular. Byrne’s removing what made those issues special and leaving the regular, inspectacular stuff instead.

One particular problem I have with this issue is the rescue of John Jameson’s flight–Spider-Man doesn’t hijack the plane anymore, instead Jonah goes after him for setting it up for his own “glorification.” It would have been a lot more interesting to see why the general in the original issue didn’t think to call down to the airfield to get Spider-Man a jet.

Lots of lame, premature cameos–Mary Jane, Norman Osborn, a Kraven mention.

It takes Byrne twice as long to tell the Spider-Man origin this issue. Retell, sorry.

I’m trying to think if there’s a single thing he does in the comic worth mentioning. He adds black people, he makes Peter’s classmates really vicious, Liz Allen in particular.

Otherwise, it’s not much different than a padded retelling of the Spider-Man origin one might read in any retelling, without a big Chapter One written across the top, except Doctor Octopus’s new importance.

Byrne’s artwork is boring, the standard Byrne of the nineties, but he does frame the pages with Spider-Man heading over to beat up the robber. Conceptually, it’s a little more interesting, but for all the “advances” in graphic storytelling, Byrne’s story panels are in no way better than Ditko’s. They pad out scenes not needing padding out.

Uncle Ben doesn’t tell Peter the “great power” line here at all.

You know, it’s not terrible. I mean, it’s kind of dumb in a nineties rehash kind of way–if Byrne ever got so thorough in his thinking of Superman’s origin, he never showed it in Man of Steel and just let a lot go unmentioned–but it’s nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. Maybe because it’s just the origin of the Lizard, the Sandman and the Vulture.

What’s bad about it is Byrne’s faces. He’s fully formed John Byrne here, where everyone looks exactly the same. The Tinkerer looks the same as the Vulture, since they’re both old. Flint Marko looks the same as Norman Osborn, because they have the hair, but they also look the same, in the face, as Curt Connors.

The writing is no worse, for instance, than when Mark Millar did his Spider-Man villain amp-up in 2004. Some of it’s probably better.