THE LUNEFABLE REVIEW
Spider-Trinity: Reborn Into Marvel Universe
Peter Parker Knows the Movies. Nobody Told Him About the Kitchen Ban.
A stranger with Peter’s face can date the Marvel universe from Tony Stark’s headlines. Guessing what Aunt May remembers about him turns out to be harder.
THE SHORT TAKE
Read it for the difference between knowing the cast and knowing the people you have to eat dinner with. This Peter is at his most interesting when the latter catches him out.
An envelope by the bathroom sink
Someone has made a mistake, and Peter Parker can see it in the mirror. That is Andrew Garfield looking back. Beside the sink is a letter from the One Above All, explaining why the stranger wearing this face was never meant to get the part. He stepped between a gun and its intended victim in his old life. It is a wonderfully perverse casting decision: the very quality that makes him a plausible Spider-Man is the reason the original plan went wrong. My favorite touch is that he spends a moment looking for a bathroom while pacing right past the door. So much for divine guidance.
The letter gives him a world to save. The first thing he actually does is sit down at the computer. It is a good promise to make to a reader who has watched the films more than once. For a few minutes you get to investigate right alongside him, before anyone has produced a suit or even suggested where to buy the material.
The search result that is not there
Tony Stark is doing well enough to be bad news in the papers. That tells Peter something more useful than a date: one particular disaster still lies ahead. A search for the Fantastic Four, on the other hand, comes up empty. He tries the Baxter Building instead. I like that small change of search term because you can see the intelligence at work. A team might not exist yet; an address can. Familiar faces are clues here, but the rules of the puzzle give Peter no guarantee that a face, a building and a future villain have all come out of the same film.
This is also where the book asks the most patience. Peter sometimes explains a casting difference and then explains what he thinks about the difference. The Osborns in particular left me less sure which version he feared than when he started searching. If you have a favorite incarnation, arguing with his conclusions can be part of the fun. A newcomer would have good reason to prefer the next clue: a dead phone that somebody bothered to charge for him.
What May remembers
May hands back the phone on her way to make sure he gets to school. The wallpaper is his, and so is the music, from a life in which he never had this aunt. It is a modest thing to get back after dying. I found it more affecting than the far grander gifts that arrive with Peter’s memories. Equations are useful, but the pleasure of putting on headphones and singing on the way to school belongs to this particular person. Even his breakfast survives the transition, if only as a couple of pancakes stuffed into his jacket.
The memory gaps are oddly selective. Standing at his locker can give him the combination. It cannot give him a clean answer to every question a relative might ask at dinner. In between, he sits a physics exam that is hardly a contest. The early chapters give him such easy command of both science and fighting that it helps to watch for the situations where nobody has given him the right answer in advance.
What the people with phones came to see
The school courtyard supplies one. Flash Thompson has hold of a younger pupil. Other students are filming; Gwen is trying to get through. Peter is asked to take a picture. He refuses, which would make for an uncomplicated bit of heroism if he did not also rather relish the chance to embarrass Flash in public. Watch the spectators. They are perfectly happy to change which boy they are laughing at without once putting down their phones. Peter can redirect a punch. Redirecting that appetite is another matter.
What sold me on following him out of the courtyard was the lunch table. He checks on the pupils caught up in the fight while the audience is still replaying it. Gwen later finds room in the same judgment for both his nerve and his foolishness. Missy gets a say in who joins them. For all the time Peter spends recognizing actors, he needed to show up and do something before there was a place for him to sit with these people.
A briefcase that lands too heavily
Two weeks later there is a lovely piece of detective work in the house. Peter knows where to look in his father’s briefcase because he remembers the movie. He only realizes he has missed something when he puts it down and hears its weight. That second discovery feels earned in a way the first could never be. Of the things the case brings him, the one he wants out on his desk is an ordinary photograph of a little boy with his parents.
The same distinction makes for a funny reversal in May’s kitchen. Peter can spend hours considering a flaw in an extraordinary piece of research, yet has no idea what his predecessor once did to lose the right to cook unsupervised. Between the papers on the counter, the rent bills and the meal he is determined to make, you get a better idea of what saving this particular household might involve. Start at the bathroom mirror for the ridiculous shock of recognition. Stay to see how often Peter, of all people, will need somebody else to tell him what happened in his own house.
Based on chapters 1–8 of the English edition. The repeated chapter labels are source formatting. Chapter six briefly overlaps the end of five, then continues into a new cafeteria scene. This is an opening impression, not a full-series verdict. No later plot developments are discussed.
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