Spider-Man: Life Story / YMMV

Awesome Art: Mark Bagley has gotten a lot of praise for his art while Chip Zdarsky has also been praised for his unique stylized covers for each decade.
Continuity Lockout: Life Story as a series does depend on reader familiarity with some amount of Spider-Man continuity and lore. In issue #5, Peter refers to Ezekiel warning him about Morlun without him showing up in the story, needing people to know about him from The Amazing Spider-Man (J. Michael Straczynski).
Gateway Series: Life Story with its streamlined decade-per-issue snapshot of key moments in Spider-Man's actual publication history is a good introduction and compendium to key moments in the character's comics history. Much in the same way that X-Men: Grand Design was.
It's Short, So It Sucks!: A number of fans feel the six issue miniseries tried to cram in far too many plotlines and characters with a number of plot threads being dropped or receiving rushed resolutions. The constant time skips keep making major changes offscreen that are only briefly glanced over. The final issue is especially criticized for this as Doom takes over the world, killing a number of other superheroes, while never actually appearing. If Zdarsky had gotten to do his original miniseries per decade idea or a longer maxi-series, this might have been alleviated.
Just Here for Godzilla: A number of news-sites and fans became interested in the story once Captain America decided that The Vietnam War was a mistake and sought to defend people from both sides out of protest. Though many wondered how the story would go from there, this subplot only served to mark the beginning of Cap and Iron Man's animosity, setting up the events of the Civil War in issue 5.
Narm: Mary Jane's utterly warped facial expression when it looks like Ben might have been killed by Morlun.
Spiritual Successor:
- A number of fans have noted the project's similarity to Ed Piskor's X-Men: Grand Design which merged all the different X-Men eras into a straight narrative by inserting it against the actual historical period and skirting the static aging of ongoing comics.
- As a series that shuts off Comic-Book Time and tells its story through decades, it's also one to John Byrne's Superman & Batman: Generations.
- And as a series that shows a potential ending to Peter Parker's story, it's one to Marvel's The End line of comics, especially since the character never received his own title in that series.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
- Some readers weren't keen on the idea of Kraven being Venom. More than a few fans cited that if Eddie Brock were to remain as Venom, then the enmity against Spider-Man would have been a lot stronger and more harrowing than the comparatively smaller personal threat of Kraven.
- A good number of readers, particularly fans of Iron Man didn't like how Tony got changed into a one-note asshole Corrupt Corporate Executive with only a single redeeming moment at the end espeically since the rest of the heroes and even villains got naunced and sympathetic portrayals. Conflating matters is how simiarly Zdarsky writes Tony in other comics such as Devil's Reign, leading to some fans accusing him of hating Iron Man.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: After failing to avert a nuclear explosion, the story briefly lingers on Vision standing motionless in the nuclear crater in the aftermath. While it feels as if this is building something related to him, both Vision and the nuclear explosion are never mentioned again afterwards.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- Due to the limited number of issues the story has, a number of plot threads come and go without much exploration. This is especially egregious when Doctor Doom conquers the world and kills a number of heroes... offscreen.
- One of the main criticisms the story did receive is due to the fact that the narrative was strictly told from Peter's perspective the reader never gets to see the full fallout of Captain America defecting during the Vietnam War.
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Among some readers, the steady piling on of misery and the increasingly unsympathetic behavior of this version of Peter is quite off-putting.
Unexpected Character: After Peter and Mary Jane's divorce in issue #3, many readers fully expected Felicia Hardy to be added to the story in issue #4 as Peter's rebound relationship. Which made Peter entering a relationship with Jessica Jones all the more surprising.

YMMV / Spider-Man: Life Story

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