When I reviewed Stray Bullets a couple weeks ago (review), I mentioned that Lapham had stopped working on Stray Bullets to do mainstream work (due to higher pay). Spider-Man: With Great Power is one of the books Lapham worked on. It is an out of continuity look into the beginning of Spider-Man’s career. It mentions briefly the the spider bite and stops before Uncle Ben dies which basically leaves his glorious wrestling career as the subject of this 5 issue series. That’s right, we have five issues dealing with Spider-Man’s wrestling career. So, how did Lapham and Harris do?

So, the entire mini series takes the place of 5 pages in the original Spider-Man origin story. Needless to say, they’ve expanded it a bit. There is a lot more story about Peter Parker going into wrestling and a subplot of a woman who worked for the wrestling league, but then jumps to be on Parker’s side (it didn’t make a whole lot of sense) and he has a relationship with her. Parker also hangs out with Flash Thompson’s girlfriend Liz a little while and has a run in with the Fantastic Four. J. Jonah Jameson decides to attack Spider-Man in print while he is just a wrestler and his wrestling league decides he needs to fight crime to make his image better. And it’s just a huge mess.

There isn’t enough story to go on and it shows. Lapham doesn’t have enough to work with to make it a story worth caring about. I’m not a big stickler for continuity, but having Spider-Man start fighting crime before Uncle Ben dies. On a side note, it’s interesting to see how much Uncle Ben has grown in popularity and importance since his original appearance. In the first Spider-Man origin story, Uncle Ben appears in only a handful of panels and says about 5 sentences. Now, with the movie and a lot of the origin retelling, he’s become a much bigger character. Originally the with great power line is just mentioned in the captions at the end of the origin. As time went on, Uncle Ben has been given that line (to give him more importance) and that’s what happens here.

Tony Harris’ art is wonderful (although he only drew the first 4 issues, David Lapham drew issue 5. Harris has a wonderful way with people. They look like real people and not like idealized super heroes and that is what’s needed here. It’s easy to tell the people apart and to read their expressions.

Overall it seems like a giant waste of time for someone of Lapham’s talent. I’d much prefer that he could support himself working on Stray Bullets than to do books like this that are silly  and badly done. Not Recommended.