These event-related short-story collections are always hit-or-miss, but I have to say that this one hits a lot more than it misses. Skottie Young and Katie Cook's stories are cute, though fairly forgettable. Although I liked Thompson's steampunk story, the script still suffers from too much clichéd commentary from Lady Reilly about feeling trapped given the limitations on her as a woman in the late 1800s. It's certainly not untrue, but Thompson doesn't put much effort into making that lament original; in fact, he goes too far the other direction, trying to get us to believe that Reilly somehow managed to get three university degrees despite being a woman.
It's actually the interstitial stories that make this issue. Morlun finding the Hostess Fruit Pie Spider-Man to be the "greatest snack of all" is one of the funniest things that I've read all year. Similarly, I LOLed at Morlun leaving daily comic-strip Spidey due to the chronal instability that meant that it takes days to "perform the simplest actions" in that world. Slott doesn't really have to prove that he's a Spider-Man fan, given the attention to detail that he's exhibited throughout his run. But, these two sequences really remind you just how well he knows this character. I'm not sure that they're worth the $4.99 price tag of this issue, but they come close.
*** (three of five stars)
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