These Epic Collections of Spider-Man are just packed. This volume has the brief bit where Spidey's powers get enhanced to a ridiculous degree in order to fight the billions of villains who are always showing up, teaming up, and splitting up to take him down. There's appearances of Doctor Doom, Magneto, Hulk (when he was grey), the frightful Four, and The Punisher.

I'm reading this as part of my attempt to read all the Venom books, and once again, the Venom story is a very small part of the collection, but it's a fun one. While Spidey is teaming up with The Punisher to take down a drug lord (who turns out to be the US Government! telling Frank and Peter that gold will soon be worthless , so the US Government is going to make cocaine the new money standard!), Venom is in the background escaping from prison again, and getting ready for a Spider-rematch.

Michelinie's long run on Spider-Man was a really cool evolution in Spidey stories as there were always B and C storylines that weren't just background fodder, but most of them were future A storylines building up tension, so that it wasn't the classic "This Month Spidey battles Hobgoblin, but next month it's The Kingpin, who we haven't seen in a while." There seems to always be about two or three issues worth of villains in the background while Spidery fights someone else, and they make their way to be the spotlight villain before shuffling into prison for a while. It really does help the Marvel Universe feel more realistic.

The Venom story itself is better than the previous two, as Spidey is also battling a Mary Jane stalker and his two henchmen (prolonged sigh) Styx and Stone. As with the previous stories, you get no information about what the symbiote is, or why it cares about Peter except that it is sad(?), angry(?), disappointed(?) that Peter will no longer be its host. And it is nice to see that, for the third time, Spidey uses a different means to defeat Venom, so it's not the same, tired storyline.

I also preferred [a:Erik Larsen|1458337|Erik Larsen|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1215893503p2/1458337.jpg]'s art here to the [a:Todd McFarlane|26019|Todd McFarlane|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1210968056p2/26019.jpg] art in the last volume, but only slightly. The anatomy and faces were similar to McFarlane's, which is odd when you look at their disparate work now.

If you liked Spidey stories as comic moved from the 80s to the 90s, this is definitely a collection you want to pick up. Also if you like the evolving storyline concept that I talkes about a few paragraphs above.

An uneven collection as Spider-man begins to turn toward the nineties, but not quite as terrible as I thought it'd be. The Cosmic Arc was fun, though the conclusion is missing from this arc. Spidey faces a variety of other people's villains who secretly serve the purposes of Dr. Doom. Then the content takes a bit of a dive with the Punisher and Venom arcs, which preview some of the extreme 90s-ness that peaks in violence with [b:Spider-Man: Maximum Carnage|850492|Spider-Man Maximum Carnage|Tom DeFalco|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1349082728s/850492.jpg|836003] and in stupidity with [b:The Amazing Spider-Man: The Complete Clone Saga Epic, Vol. 1|7009918|The Amazing Spider-Man The Complete Clone Saga Epic, Vol. 1|J.M. DeMatteis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1389160389s/7009918.jpg|7254918]. These stories are at least readable with some art by Savage Dragon's [a:Erik Larsen|1458337|Erik Larsen|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1215893503p2/1458337.jpg] that isn't great, but isn't terrible either. The final three annuals have another silly Micro-Spider-man arc with some forgettable backup stories. This set is more for completionists or 90s fans than casual Spider-man readers.

Let down but some average art towards the end in the annuals...but overall one of my favourite eras for Spidey!