Back in black

Marvel’s “Civil War” storyline comes to a close today.

I’m sure there will be sighs of relief, gasps of disbelief and more than a few groans of disapproval. For me, I’ll be upset that the series ends with Spidey back in black.

I’m sure there are believers out there who remember with fondness Spider-Man’s black costume. Truth be told, there were some stories in that era that I loved, and the costume did grow on me.

But it was the blue-and-red clad Spider-Man that I plunked 75 cents on the counter for — it is the reason that I came to love comics.

The black costume first appeared after Spidey was knocked out in the heat of a battle during Marvel Comics cross-title event, “Secret Wars.” While the Web-head was knocked out and an alien blob crawled over him while he was out. When he came to, the creature had taken the form of the black costume.

It returned to the planet with Spider-Man in the aftermath of the “Secret Wars.”

The new costume had several features, and it even generated its own webbing. I wasn’t too pleased with that feature because I remembered the moments when Spidey almost became street pizza when his webbing ran out.

Eventually, the costume started leaning toward its darker tendencies, taking Peter Parker’s body with it as it went out into the night to stop more bad guys. But it was much more aggressive, nearly killing some hoodlums.

When Parker rid himself of the costume, it found another host in Eddie Brock, who hated both Parker and Spider-Man, and the villain Venom was born.

Venom’s abilities matched Spider-Man’s, including strength, wall-crawling and webbing. More importantly, since Spidey had worn the costume so long, it could circumvent his early-warning system, his “Spider sense.”

I never learned to love the black costume, although it was the most successful of all the costume changes for the Web-head.

I’ll reserve my judgement on this recent change, but I’m pretty suspicious that it was done to remind folks of the black costume, since the Venom storyline is a part of the new movie. If the story is well told, and J. Michael Straczynski is the teller of the tale so it should be, I’ll stick around.

Still, I’m already missing the red and blue.

Counting down

Free Comic Book Day is 10 weeks away. I’ll keep you updated, give you some history on the day and hopefully have you all keyed up for the event on May 5. The clock is ticking.

Shawn Munguia does graphics and layout for the Valley Morning Star. He can be reached at 956-421-9870 or you can e-mail him at shawnm@valleystar.com.