Ahh, Spider-Man and Wolverine, two tastes that go together as great as… well, two things which have been forced together because they’re both really popular.

That doesn’t mean it can’t work, and there’s nothing wrong with doing a Marvel version of DC’s Superman/Batman team-up, it’s just that the dynamic isn’t as natural – Superman and Batman have an obvious light/dark, brawn/brain contradiction going on, whereas the relationship between Spider-Man and Wolverine isn’t that distinct.

They annoy each other, certainly, but Spider-Man has that effect on everyone, not just Wolverine.

Nonetheless, as Marvel’s two most popular heroes, a joint book putting them together makes sense, and following their membership of the Avengers there’s at least more of a history between the two.

This attempt at a team-up has a certain prestige about it. Written by the highly respected Jason Aaron and drawn by newly-returned-from-DC superstar artist Adam Kubert, it bears the ‘Astonishing’ banner.

Now, we gave ‘Astonishing X-Men’ decidedly mixed reviews when it launched from Joss Whedon’s guest celebrity word processor in 2004, and haven’t paid it any attention at all since it transferred to Warren Ellis’ control – but Marvel obviously consider it a good basis for a line of comics that are a cut above the monthly grind, slightly outside the grip of regular continuity and, if the X-book is anything to judge by, free to drift way off schedule to accommodate big-name artists.

This first issue (of six, although if it’s a success I’d expect a follow-up series to arrive fairly quickly) sets itself up as something special by throwing the two heroes into a situation that’s exotically unfamiliar for both of them.

I won’t say any more, as Aaron starts the story deep into an unusual situation, and takes a typically entertaining and roundabout way of explaining how Peter Parker and Logan got where they are. Suffice to say that putting both characters out of their depth brings out their conflicting personalities, pushing them to the edge: Wolverine has become more feral, while Spider-Man’s rambling eccentricity and nerdishness has blossomed into a dreamy eccentricity.

Although he broke through with hard-nosed Vertigo books like ‘Scalped’ and ‘The Other Side’, Aaron has previously expressed, and indeed demonstrated, his affection for Grant Morrison’s ‘New X-Men’, and here shows a love for the wild imaginative possibilities of superhero comics that will appeal to Morrison fans, with cultures rising and falling, fantastical vistas, and a plot stretching across time and possibly space.

It’s the kind of book where even the throwaway villains are distinct, fun and characterful, a comic that takes the oft-said, rarely-delivered promise of superhero comics’ ‘infinite budget’ and actually delivers. Aaron provides the ideas, and Kubert provides the gloss with some lovely visuals that hit the right character beats as well as portraying the big splashy action.

Characterisation is also built by inter-locking monologues, a trick that’s often used in comics but rarely works as well as it does here. It helps that this is a team book with no supporting characters as such – Spidey and Wolverine are at the centre of the story, and it really doesn’t matter what any of the walk-ons think or feel.

As such, the reader can alternate between the duo’s thought processes without being dragged away: for a big cosmic epic, ‘Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine’ is surprisingly intimate and internalised. Unlike so many team-ups, it feels like it’s actually about these specific characters even if, so far, it hasn’t revealed any great over-arching story reason for them to be forced together.

It looks like that’s coming, though. Hints are dropped, and twists are twists. By the end of the issue the leads are in another place altogether, a different and, by the looks of it, extremely inventive, scenario.

‘Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine’ is pretty much your ideal big-name talent superhero comic: big ideas, fun and exciting, good to look at an generally a really entertaining read. A class act.