Amazing Spider-Man Presents: Jackpot #1-3

It's too bad this series ends up the way it does, because for awhile I was really impressed with the original approach Marc Guggenheim was bringing to the title. The whole "who is Jackpot" thing is annoyingly complicated, but at least Guggenheim keeps it fairly simple here. The real Jackpot (Sara Ehret) sold her super-hero license to another gal who wore the Jackpot suit for most of her previous appearances. It looks like Sara was Jackpot in the first appearance of the character in the Brand New Day Free Comic Book Day issue, but all the appearances after that was Alana Jobson impersonating the trained hero. After Alana died on the job, Spider-Man guilted Sarah into taking back the Jackpot name and now Sarah is trying to use her great power responsibly.

Jackpot's first nemesis is Boomerang, and she fights him a few times over these three issues. I don't like his new extreme costume every much and his new big boomerangs look kind of silly. Jackpot faces off against a new Rose, Armadillo, White Rabbit, and Boomer in these issues, they are all good choices for a new hero's arch foes, I'd think.

Through a rookie mistake involving fingerprints, Boomerang tracks Jackpot back to her home where she lives with her husband and three year old daughter. Boomerang kills JP's husband right off the bat and that's where the series hit a snag for me. I had never read about a young Mom super-hero and I loved the idea of a successful business woman with a nice home life trying to be a hero. But after that death, Jackpot is another scarred, angry vigilante avenging dead loved ones. We readers have seen that quite a bit over the years, and Jackpot is a heck of a lot less interesting now.

JP and Spidey go through the motions, beat up the bad guys, find out the shocking ID of the new Rose, but it's all sort of pointless. Jackpot is angry and bitter, her daughter is scarred, and the book ends with them assuming new ID's, essentially reduced to witness protection. It's too bad, Jackpot was a rather interesting character for one and a half issues.

Adriana Melo does an interesting job on art. I don't like Jackpot's new red and black duds, her green sparkly suit was a lot more '70s and fun-looking. Boomerang's redesign is not as much fun as his old look either, and the new boomerangs look too much like swords. Heck, Boomer uses them more like knives than he does boomerangs!

Melo does differentiate between the two Jackpots, the first one was slimmer while the new one is a bit more endowed. I really liked the way Jackpot's husband was a smaller guy, he actually had a different body shape than the average super-hero. Oh, and Melo's White Rabbit looks tremendous.

Issue 1 - Good
Issue 2 - Fair
Issue 3 - Average