Writer: Nick Spencer
Artist: Steve Lieber
Colors: Rachelle Rosenberg

I feel like it's easier to get cynical in the world of comics more than any other entertainment medium. When you see the fifth Batman or seventh Wolverine title hit the shelves, it's easy to just brush anything but the main title as a cheap cash grab. And hell, sometimes even the main series can feel that way. Then they'll take it one step further, and create entire series based on secondary characters for those big heroes. And that's where The Superior Foes of Spider-Man fall in.

Premiering during "Superior Spider-Month," you'll be forgiven if you skipped over it. I guess the whole Superior book is doing pretty well for Marvel, so they figure that name has some weight now. So the best idea they had is to follow the new sinister six in their own book? And there's only five of them? Well, I'm happy to report that, while it may not be the best idea on paper, this book is just plain great.

Don't worry about any lingering feelings about the current direction of Spider-man, because our lead man is Boomerang. Yeah, if you're crime group is lead by a guy with a name like that, you know you're in trouble. And they don't hide from that fact. Just about every scene with these guys (I'm including the girl in there, 'guys' has just become an asexual term) is hilarious. None of them are monologuing 'take over the world' types. They sound like normal guys, albeit with super powers, just trying to get to the next score so they can keep having money. No world domination, no grand scheme, just money. And it's awesome. I desperately want to tell you about all the gags, which are incredily frequent for a 22 page book, but I'm afraid to ruin them for you. I found myself laughing out loud several times. Everyone is crappy in their own way, and they're about as far from Superior as you can get. But you just want more of them by the end.

The art matches the tone of the book perfectly. Everything feels very street level and grounded. The expressions they're able to get out of characters with masks on is nothing short of spectacular. And even more, they're able to get full scenes and reactions with just symbols in place of words. It's very reminicent of another great book, Hawkeye. I don't know if it was intentional, but I will never say no to one more book like that on the shelves. The coloring is nothing to sneeze at either. It comes together to paint a normal everyday scene with these terrible people in stupid costumes.

After trying several new #1s this past week trying to find something new, this is the first one to really jump out at me. Take note comic world, this is how you start a series.