Among the spread of new comics on the wall at Comicopia this week were two first issues: Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, and of course I bought them both. I liked the pairing in this case; back when I first started reading the adventures of these two characters, neither one had his own book, so seeing these two first issues together had an innate appeal.

This first new issue of Spider-Man is something of an anthology, with bits and snippets and teasers from upcoming Spider-Titles in what appears to be an enormous franchise. I think such expanded franchises are a very bad habit both Marvel and DC have picked up; I’m sure featuring their most popular characters in multiple monthly titles helps both companies to pay their bills, but I’ve virtually never seen the practice yield much in the way of quality storytelling. Multiple Batman titles have in the past served to water down the dramatic singularity of the character (he’s now the head of a large and loving family of costumed boys and girls, as absurd as that concept is and always has been); multiple X-Men titles brought about the terminal narrative congestion from which they still suffer today; neither I nor anybody else in the world could make any sense of the bewildering proliferation of Avengers titles and rosters that spread over half a dozen monthly comics. Who’s on the team? Who’s not? Who knows?

Luckily, this first issue does have a self-contained opening story that’s meant to introduce readers to this new iteration of the character. Gone is the awkward teenage web-slinger of years past, and gone is the lovable loser of later incarnations; instead, we get a grown-up self-assured Peter Parker, wealthy CEO of Parker Industries, who has the world convinced that Spider-Man is his bodyguard. This Peter Parker is a philanthropist and model employer, but he also finds time to fight crime as Spider-Man (although he also employs a separate Spider-Man, or maybe more than one).

The issue won’t make much sense to readers who weren’t following the last three years of the character’s old title run, but it’ fairly entertaining even so. There’s a feeling of cautious, tepid re-invention to the whole industrialist-by-day crimefighter-by-night setup – a needlessly complicated setup, but who knows what some clever writers won’t be able to make out of it?

A very different situation obtains in the first issue of the new Doctor Strange: this is indeed a soup-to-nuts re-introduction for readers, and it works fantastically well, thanks in no small part to the incredible artwork of Chris Bachalo. We get Doctor Strange’s origin from way back in 1963 – a sturdy classic in no need of revamping – and we jump right into his mystical adventures in the present day. His look is unchanged (except that the grey hair at his temples has been colored in – after all, a fairly young man will be playing him in the Marvel movie next year) – the Eye of Agamatto, the Cloak of Levitation, the mustache, etc. By sticking to the basics and doing them with such infectious gusto, Marvel has put one of their flagship characters right back on the ‘must read’ list. Not a gimmicky gender-change in sight.