Read as a whole, the individual issues really flow well together and form an overarching narrative, without feeling like they need to be read one after the other like the standard made-for-trade six issue arcs made commonplace in modern comics. This is most evident in the supporting characters and subplots, which weave through several issues and resolve at their own pace instead of being shoved into a set number of issues. In sharp contrast, it has sadly become standard practice nowadays to simply remove supporting characters and their storylines in favour of superheroes talking to other superheroes.
While I am a big fan of the series and I am admittedly bias about the series quality, I was more than happy to purchase this collection. Why? Because even though I own the individual issues and tracked down all the digests that were released, this will be the first time any issues of the Spider-Girl series have been collected in trade paperback form beyond the initial 8 issues. I consider it a major misstep that Marvel didn't release the series in this format until now; 20 years after the series began publication.
Much of the appeal of this release lies in potentially having the entire series sitting on my bookshelf in all it's glossy-paged glory someday soon. In addition, the last 16 pages are dedicated to various 'extras' such as variant covers, concept art and contemporary promotional materials. The most interesting of these for me was an article from the Marvel Catalog: August 1998. I'd never seen this piece before and found it fascinating to read through the article, which includes an interview with Tom Defalco and mentions the creative teams early plans for the nascent trio of titles that birthed the MC2 imprint.
If I had to make a negative comment, it's that the cover's card stock is rather flimsy when compared to other similar recent Marvel collections. While this doesn't really bother me much, it did mean my copy arrived in the post a little worse for wear, complete with a few marks and bends on the front cover. However, the blame for that surely lies with Amazon's frankly abysmal packaging, which consisted of nothing more than a brown envelop without bubble-wrap. Cheers Amazon!
Until I can gleefully announce the next volume of Spider-Girl: The Complete Collection, I remain
frogoat