The Amazing Spider-Man Halloween Special #1 is the exact type of comic book that transports you to the simple joys of spooky season and what drew you to comics in the first place. It has a certain one-off whimsy. It’s simple, self-contained, and smile-inducing.
This reviewer doesn’t feel the aches and pains, or the emotional weight and responsibilities of being a 45-year-old man, but rather like a kid who picked this issue off the spinner at the local pharmacy and flipped through it in the back of his mom’s station wagon.
It’s a warm, fun, low-stakes read, the literary equivalent of scoring a bag of your favorite Halloween candy from the nice lady down the street.
The Halloween special is divided into three parts — a main Spider-Man storyline, a short about Spidey, Venom, and the Sinister Six as kids (down in near-watercolor perfection), and a two-pager lampooning classic newspaper comic strips (Peanuts, Garfield, etc.) with Marvel characters.
The main story finds Peter Parker on his favorite holiday, Halloween (not Christmas, really, Peter?). As Spidey’s fate would have it, Hallow’s Eve has pulled a heist, and he must chase the mask-wearing villain. Hallow’s Eve uses her bag of masks, including all the Halloween classics (witches, Frankenstein, etc.), to stymie Spidey. That is, until a building catches fire, and the supervillain must make a moral decision—make a clean getaway or help the web-headed do-gooder save the day.
Hallow’s Eve is one of Marvel’s more underrated characters right now. She was a fantastic addition to the short-lived Blood Hunters series (written by Erica Schultz), where she teamed with Yelena Belova, Dagger, and Elsa Bloodstone to fight off the remnants of the vampires created during Blood Hunt. Her ability to change her character based on her satchel of masks is a fun gimmick, and it’d be great to see her jump out of the pages and into the animated or live-action world of Marvel.
The story’s simplicity also serves as a needed antithesis to the other Halloween-friendly version of Spider-Man in the new Marvel Midnight series. Seeing Spider-Man crack dad jokes and get cursed into shooting candy and bats out of his webshooters is a welcome sight after reading Peter’s body-horror origins in the Midnight premiere. Yet, while these two sit at opposite ends of the Halloween spectrum, they still make for fun seasonal reading. It’s like going to a bar on Halloween and knocking back a few drinks, but also getting free candy — it’s the best of both world.
In the end, The Amazing Spider-Man Halloween Special #1 is not a mind-blowing, game changing comic. No holiday special comic ever needs to be. Instead, it’s a warm, nostalgic comic perfect for any age to be ready during Halloweentime.
