Sentinel was most likely the first Sean McKeever book I ever read. It hit in 2003, right about when I’d pretty much given up any hope of not getting back into comics. Marvel did me the favor of launching the Tsunami line around that time, with a bunch of new series built for the manga/teen reader. I picked it up, spurred on mostly by UDON’s art, and thought it was pretty good. A boy and his giant death robot out having adventures. Kinda simple, but it worked. Not great, but enjoyable. He later picked up Mystique from Brian K Vaughan and did a solid job there, too.

What really sold me on him was his writing on Mary Jane with Takeshi Miyazawa and Gravity with Mike Norton. Gravity is one of those books that played with the Marvel Universe in an interesting way. Greg Willis, a kid from the middle of nowhere, gained gravity-based powers. Now, he’s grown up in the Marvel U, where heroes have been active for about as long as he’s been alive. So, what does he do? He moves to New York City for college, with a side of superheroing. He sucks at it. And then he gets better.

Mary Jane, though, was excellent work. It was, boiled down, Spider-Man’s Girlfriend Mary Jane. McKeever scripted a high school drama from Mary Jane’s point of view that was part Saved by the Bell, part reinvention of the early era of the Spider-mythos, and part romance comic. Spider-Man figured large in the series, with Peter Parker firmly in the background. It was a good series, and managed to spinoff a sequel miniseries and then a full-blown ongoing called Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane.

2007: Sean McKeever moves across the street to DC Comics. He jumps into Countdown with both feet and, well, it sucked. Everyone sucked on Countdown, though, so maybe that was just the fist of editorial fiat cramping his style. He took over Teen Titans in issue 50. Twenty-one issues and a mini-series later, there were, what, a lot of dead Titans and a whole lot of comics that weren’t exactly worth reading? McKeever gave up the reins to the book, and instead scripted a back-up feature starring Ravager that run until issue 81.

In late 2009, McKeever came back to Marvel with Nomad: Girl Without A World. Nomad was Rikki Barnes, an alternate universe’s Bucky who was trapped on Earth. She had no hope of getting back home, so she was trying to make do with the life she was given. A story about a teenage girl hero trying to find where she belongs? McKeever killed on it. It was a good story, the sort of pitch-perfect teen work that I expected to see out of him when he took on the Titans. It clicked. It worked.

McKeever got an upgrade. Nomad was moved to a back-up story in Ed Brubaker’s Captain America, boosting its profile and reminding Marvel fans that McKeever was back. Though the hardcore espionage tone of Captain America clashed with Nomad‘s free-wheeling teen action, the story was good. It was simple stuff, a hero having to solve a mystery and make a friend (Araña, a heroine dating from the days when Gravity debuted), but it was good. It’s what you want out of teen comics.

Later this year, McKeever and David Baldeon, the artist on Nomad, are launching Young Allies. It’s a teen team book and it sounds like it’s right up McKeever’s alley. He’s bringing in Firestar of the New Warriors, a character he recently wrote to good effect in a one-shot, Araña, Gravity, and a few new characters.

I hate to pigeon-hole the man, but it seems like teen heroes are his thing. He’s good at them, and I like reading about them under his pen. Teen Titans should have been a match made in heaven, with Marvel’s premiere teen writer paired with the only teen team that was still viable in comics at that time, but something got screwed up somewhere and the stories we got were nowhere near what McKeever is capable of. I don’t know why, though my best guess considering other high profile disappointments at DC would be “editorial handcuffs.” Who knows, though. It’ll make a good tell-all interview one day.

But, he’s back at Marvel, and he came out swinging for the fences. I think I’ve liked all of the Marvel work he’s done since he came back. He’s even done a little fill-in on Web of Spider-Man with Stephanie Buscema that I dug. I’m happy that this guy who was there with some interesting ideas back when I was getting back into comics is back to pumping out good stuff years later. Young Allies sounds dope, and I’m honestly hoping that Marvel gives Heinberg a miss and hands over the Young Avengers. McKeever would kill with those characters.

The status quo for Venom had been changed, perhaps forever. The Venom symbiote had moved away from Eddie Brock, leaving a cancer-filled husk of a human being. While Mac Gargan found success as the new Venom, Eddie would be nearly forgotten about, suffering in a hospital bed. Eddie Brock himself was never a match for Spider-Man from the start. What hope would he have as an antagonist when he’s weakened by a disease?

Around that time, directly after Civil War, Marvel was making a big deal out of Spider-Man’s new look. Or old look. Whatever. The third Spider-Man movie – which featured the black costume – was on its way to theaters and Marvel chose to capitalize it in a way that really didn’t work. Spider-Man would start wearing a black costume again. The whole thing was a list of letdowns.

Was it the Venom symbiote? No. It was just a spandex costume he wore because he wanted to kill the Kingpin. Wearing black means he’s totally hardcore now.

So he’s going to kill the Kingpin? Ha! Come on, this is Spider-Man. The only people he’s killed are Gwen Stacy and Wolverine’s spy girlfriend, both unintentional. Spider-Man’s too much of a pussy to even kill Darkseid with a god-killing gun if he had the chance.

Okay, but the black costume will have some kind of storyline blow-off, right? No, not really. He wears it for an arc or so of his different comics, confusing people who will pick up and read World War Hulk for years to come. Then he simply stops wearing it. Like, at the beginning of One More Day, where it would make sense for him to still have it on, he’s back to his regular tights. Everyone was too distracted by the, “Jesus Christ! Really?!” aspect of that story to give a damn.

But what does that have to do with Eddie Brock outside of cosmetics? The reason Spider-Man was so cheesed off at the Kingpin in the first place was because a hitman accidentally shot Aunt May when going for Peter. Now she’s in the hospital in critical condition.

Aunt May in a hospital bed? Huh. I guess that’s one thing cancer-ridden Eddie Brock could take in a fight.

It’s a nice reference to the famous Kraven’s Last Hunt cover of black costume Spider-Man rising from beneath the earth in front of his own tombstone.

The Last Temptation of Eddie Brock takes place in Sensational Spider-Man #38-39. It’s written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and drawn by Lee Weeks.

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