Spider-Man: Life-Story is a comic book written by Chip Zdarsky and art by Mark Bagley. It’s a six-part comic story that asks the question: what if Spider-Man grew up. It follows Peter Parker from 1960s teenage years through the decades all the way to 2019. Each part covers one decade.
The Extra! edition that I read, also included one more story, Annual 1. It tells the story of J. Jonah Jameson and his obsession with Spider-Man through the same decades.
The individual decade stories are not long but the story is very interesting take on the characters we’ve seen in other Marvel comics and movies from a perspective not often told. With DC’s Batman, we’ve often seen the stories take a swing at the idea of “what happens when Batman is too old” and often in those, there’s a clear continuation point through Robin.
This story is rather different. It’s a dark and emotionally heavy story of loss, sacrifice, growing old and having to fight the same battles over and over again. Cramming a full decade into a relatively short individual issue does have minor pacing issues but the overarching story is compelling enough that it’s easy to overlook the issue.
I really like Mark Bagley’s art style in this comic. Everything is crips and easy to follow but has so much character. To me, a great comic art is one where it’s effortless to follow the story but if you want to go deep, you can spend a long time looking at the scenes and details.
After finishing this, I right away reserved the Fantastic Four: Life Story from the library.