Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Here's my review of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. It's pretty long, and there will be very mild spoilers, but nothing you didn't see in the trailer.

I started reading comic books when I was very young. I started with kids stuff, Casper, Richie Rich, Hot Stuff the Lil' Devil, and Popeye and whatnot. Then I moved onto Archie, and then, one day, I came across as Batman comic book in a drug store in Apple Valley, California in 1990, and that changed my life.

I knew about these superhero characters. Batman and Superman and Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk, because of cartoons and coloring books and toys. But I'd never actually read their comics.

That Batman comic (which I still have btw) changed the direction of my life. I had never thought of a comic book as something that could be sinister or dark. The Burton Batman movie had come out the previous year and I was a fan, so I was primed for Batman comics, and man did they take. I dove HARD into superhero comics. Batman at first, then Superman, and then over to Marvel and the X-Men and Captain America and Ghost Rider (Danny Ketch was my Ghost Rider), and ultimately, Spider-Man.

I'd always had an affection for Spider-Man as a kid. Just from the 60s Ralph Bakshi cartoon and because of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, which was my first introduction to the idea of there being a Marvel shared universe. I knew all these characters existed in their own cartoons, but it was when they crossed over that it blew my mind. When Captain America and The Hulk team up to fight The Red Skull or whatever.

As soon as I went to the comic book store for the first time (as opposed to buying my comics from a magazine rack, which is how I started) I zoomed right into Spider-Man. It was also right when Spider-Man was relaunched as a new title, just Spider-Man (instead of The Amazing Spider-Man or The Spectacular Spider-Man) and Todd McFarlane was writing and drawing him.

That was a juicy time to be 12 years old and really excited about reading what I thought of as mature comics. Spider-Man was dark. Batman was dark. I liked that. Wolverine was dark. The Punisher was really dark. And now, Spider-Man was heavy and dark. With really amazing artwork.

That was exactly what I needed right then. I was a young Stephen King fan. I was a young horror movie fan. The fact that this first run of Spider-Man comics was about Spider-Man losing his mind because he was being mind controlled by I think Typhoid Mary or Calypso (it was Calypso. I just looked it up) and there were these incredible drawings of The Lizard and then later of Wendigo and Wolverine

Todd McFarlane very quickly became my first comic book artist fandom. I read all of that Spider-Man run (16 issues with Todd) before Eric Larson took over.

I once went to a comic book convention, my very first comic book convention actually, at the Shrine Auditorium in L.A. around 1991. I brought my Spider-Man #2 to get signed by Todd. He was there, signing comics and I waited in line for 2 hours and he had to leave before I got to the table. That was a drag. (in a sweet side story, I once told this sad tale to the husband of one of my wife's co-workers around 20 years ago and then the next day Sandra brought me home an autographed Todd McFarlane Spider-Man comic book that he had given her to give to me. That was incredible and I think about it all the time)

What I'm getting at is that Todd McFarlane made me love Spider-Man. He made me think about Spider-Man as a serious character with real stakes. That was a big deal for me. It was through my love of those comics that I learned to start appreciating what different artists brought to different comics.

So I think of Batman as my introduction to comics as a serious thing to invest my time and energy into, and Spider-Man as my introduction to appreciating how comic books are made and function, and the artistry and creativity involved. Spider-Man was the one that taught me that something silly can also be something serious. That depending on who was writing and who was drawing, a comic could be goofy and fun, or completely dead serious. It was all possible. Spider-Man was both.

Spider-Man was especially both when Todd McFarlane left and Eric Larson took over. Spider-Man wasn't dark anymore. He was fun again. He was youthful. It was a different vibe. I moved onto Wolverine and The Punisher and Lobo and other pissed off anti-heroes.

Fast forward to 2002 and I have one of the most impactful and important movie theater experiences of my entire life. Sandra and I went to see Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man movie with Tobey McGuire on the night before it was released. Back then, you had to go to the late show on Thursday to see the movie that comes out on Friday. So Sandra and I are in this movie theater, Silver City here in Victoria, and it's completely full of children. There were adults there too, like ourselves, but there were so many kids. Many of them wearing Spider-Man PJs and hats and costumes and everything.

And let me tell you something, those kids went fucking ape-shit over that movie. As well they should have. It was incredible. Sam Raimi did what I thought was impossible: He made a movie that looked and felt like Spider-Man. It hit so many of the right beats. It was exactly what audiences needed from a superhero movie at that time.

Fast forward to 2026 and Sandra and I are driving to the movie theater to see Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Sandra asked me if I was excited for the movie. I said not particularly. I said that I didn't really feel much of anything about it, and that made a little sad. I wasn't hyped for it. I didn't really care that much about anything that was happening in the Marvel universe lately.

I don't have superhero fatigue, but I do have Marvel fatigue. I feel like it's been spread really thin, and I didn't see how they were going to come back from that. I also said that I was disappointed that it was going to have The Punisher in it, because while I do like Bernthal's Punisher as a character, I was getting tired of the whole "Spider-Man needs a mentor from the Marvel Universe to be his new Uncle Ben" setup. I wanted a Spider-Man movie that existed independent of the rest of the MCU. Not because I dislike the MCU, but because I like Spider-Man and I get jealous. I don't want to share him with other MCU characters.

Luckily, all of that was wrong.

This movie was PHENOMENAL. It was the most comic book accurate Spider-Man movie we've had, based on vibes. If that makes sense. The imagery and characterization was exactly the tone I want from a Spider-Man movie. I want a complex Spider-Man. A Peter Parker who is sacrificing to be a hero. I like that kind of thing.

So while I've enjoyed the other Spider-Man movies, this one felt the movie like a new direction, apart from the MCU, while working in conjunction with it.

That was fun actually. Mark Ruffalo shows up (again, in the trailer) and he's mostly the same as he is in the MCU movies, but he's also just a little different, and it was refreshing. It felt like another aritst and writer writing and drawing that character. Same with The Punisher. The Frank Castle that was on The Punisher TV show was a much darker, more scary character than The Punisher in this movie. And that's a good thing, because this Punisher has to work for kids too, and still be The Punisher, and damned if they don't pull it off!

It helps that Jon Bernthal and Tom Holland have been friends for ten years because they used that chemistry to make one of the most fun comic book team-up movies I've ever seen. It felt EXACTLY like when Spider-Man would show up in a Punisher comic, or Wolverine shows up in Spider-Man. It's not to set anything up or establish some villain that's going to show up five movies from now, or anything like that. It's just those characters bumping into each other. Spider-Man and The Punisher are both characters that work in New York City and deal with street level crime most of the time. Of course they know each other. Of course they've worked together.

It's not a perfect movie. I felt like the parts where it suffered were the parts where they were setting shit up for other movies. The villain of the story is a character, I won't say who it is, but their whole part of the story, I felt, kind of slowed it down.

I liked how they handled it a lot of it, and the actor that plays this character was really good, so I don't take issue with any of that... it was more that it just didn't seem to fit quite right to me. It didn't feel like they were part of a Spider-Man story.

So that part kind of wasn't great, but honestly, it was small potatoes next to the rest of the movie (substantial potatoes) and how awesome it was.

Hiring Destin Daniel Cretton, who directed Shang-Chi, to direct this movie was absolutely the right move. He make a Spider-Man movie that felt exactly like what it was like to read Spider-Man in 1990. It felt visceral and real. It felt good.

He managed to make Spider-Man feel lived in and fresh at the same time. I can tell they took some inspiration from The Fantastic Four movie that came out a year or two ago, because it had a similar kind of color palette. That over saturated, beautiful looking comic book imagery.

So if you like Spider-Man, and you have a long, rambling history with the character like I do, I think you will enjoy Spider-Man: Brand New Day as much as I did.

4 stars.