John Byrne has been one of my favorite artists for almost as long as I've been reading comics. His X-Men run was among the first Marvels I ever picked up. And when he became a full-time writer, on books like Fantastic Four and Superman, I loved those too. I've at least enjoyed almost everything he's done...until this.

In what he clearly describes as work-for-hire, Byrne retells the earliest adventures of Spider-Man, originally created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. But a lot of developments and revelations have occurred since those first issues, and here Byrne is tasked with incorporating them retroactively. The biggie is that Norman Osborn (a.k.a. The Green Goblin) is the mastermind behind many of the foes Spidey faced in his early years. This worked in the movies, which of course were creating their own continuity, but reading it this way feels very contrived. And one "retcon" is just plain silly--the revelation that Osborn and the Sandman are distant cousins. There's no basis for this other than the fact that Steve Ditko gave them the same hairstyle. Ditko gave a lot of men this hairstyle; perhaps they all form some vast criminal organization--the Ridge-Haired League.

The stories are also updated with modern references such as home computers and email. They stick out like a sore thumb.

As for the art, it is fair but seems lazy at times. Perhaps some of the blame can be laid at the feet of Al Milgrom, a good editor but apparently the go-to artist when all the other artists are busy.

Maybe a new reader would enjoy these books, but to someone who read and reread the original stories (in paperback reprint) until they were falling apart, it feels like a half-assed redo of something that didn't need to be redone. ( )