Hello friends and readers! This week we’re taking a look at the end of a friendly-neighborhood superhero’s latest arc! And it’s… a comic for sure. Amazing Spider-Man#55 written by Nick Spencer, art by Patrick Gleason, colored by Edgar Delgado, and lettered by Joe Caramagna.
Well, that was a comic’ed book.
Look, I haven’t made it a secret that I’m not a fan of Nick Spencer’s run on Spider-Man (at least the back half of it). But this issue was so baffling and abrupt that it just landed with a resounding thud. But hey, I try to say something positive if I can.
So I’ll say this. The art team knocks this out of the park. Gleason does an incredible job at conveying emotion in the characters, even as some of them are dazed and mesmerized. He creates exciting action scenes. Delgado sets the mood with some very dark and eerie colors, and they do it all while creating a horror setting that just runs chills up your spine.
However the story has just gone off the rails in the worst ways. Here’s the high points:
- Kindred still has no origin story. Nothing to let us know where Harry Osborn got these, frankly, god-like powers. There’s also no point A to point B from how he went from a pretty good place in life to this.
- Harry’s entire motivation is that MJ dumped him decades ago (in real time) and that Peter didn’t get his father arrested the first time he was unmasked as the Green Goblin.
- Peter MURDERS his best friend (who immediately gets better).
- There are more Sins Past allusions.
- There are also more One More Day allusions.
- Peter and only Peter is the only Spider-Person able to overcome whatever magical whammy Harry puts on them. He does so easily.
- Norman was somehow prepared for/immune to the Sin-Eater’s magic shotgun.
- Norman MURDERS MJ, only so he could do it before Harry.
- Then suddenly, on the second to last page, Wilson Fisk appears out of nowhere and does… something. (Maybe something magical?)
- And the page goes to black as MJ seemingly dies in Peter’s arms.
So, Spencer still had a villain with no motivation and an origin that’s simply non-existent. He fridges Mary-Jane Watson (or leads the reader to believe it- equally bad). Parker Parker is completely out of character. And the Spider-Family is just set dressing, except Gwen who has a moment to be defiant, then goes back to being set dressing. That’s all while Spencer is winking HEAVILY at two of the worst Spider-Man stories of all time.
Then the story just stops. It doesn’t end. It does resolve. A new opponent appears suddenly, there’s some sort of magic special effect and the story stops with zero resolution, in what’s supposed to be the final issue of this story arc.
It’s cheap, it’s full of the worst tropes in comics, it’s reliant on the past of the character without any looking to the future, and then it just stops.
There’s no excuse for these stories and this run to continue. Yes, Spider-Man is a continual best seller. That does not mean that Marvel just needs to throw shit at the wall and hope it sticks. It’s time for a change. Let’s just hope someone at Marvel realizes it before the damage is irreversible.
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.
