Marvel Noir was a
concept from 2009-2010, in which Marvel released a bunch of miniseries inspired
by their popular comic books. But here’s the twist: these comic books are set
in an alternate reality inspired by
film
noir! (As a big fan of
film noir,
this really piqued my interest.) This sounds like a great idea, turning superheroes
into private eyes and going for a more realistic tone than the Marvel Universe.
And so today I’d like to take a look at the mini-series
Spider-Man Noir, which lasted four issues and was followed with a
second Spider-Man mini-series,
Eyes Without
a Face.
In Spider-Man Noir,
we find ourselves in 1933, during the Great Depression. We open on a helluva
situation: J. Jonah Jameson has been shot in his office at the Daily Bugle, and
when police break down the door, they find the masked vigilante known as “the
Spider-Man” inside. They immediately assume that the masked man has murdered
the newspaperman and open fire, despite Spider-Man’s protests that “this isn’t
what it looks like”.
