Last Remains gets an epilogue in Amazing Spider-Man #56, written by Nick Spencer, pencilled by Mark Bagley, inked by Andrew Hennessey and John Dell, colored by Rachelle Rosenberg and Edgar Delgado, and lettered by Joe Caramagna.
Want to know when you wrote a story badly?
When you have to use an epilogue to tell half the story you just finished telling so it makes sense.
Look, there are positives here.
Spencer does a pretty decent job of building the character relationships. His dialogue is strong. The set-up for the near future is interesting. Some of the side characters get some great moments to shine- I’m actually interested to see where the Overdrive/Carlie Cooper plot goes.
On the art side, this is actually the best Bagley’s art has looked on the series to date. This is the expressive and emotive artwork he’s known for. Best of all, it doesn’t feel like Ultimate Spider-Man. This is clearly Amazing Spider-Man.
However, well over half the issue is dedicated to Spencer saying “hey look, nothing you saw here was what you thought it was” and “well, that plot wasn’t actually important in the end.” Even worse, Harry’s motives are paper-thin and origin is non-existent.
Winking at the audience and saying “I’m more clever than you” is only clever when the story works. Nothing about Last Remains worked. There was no foreshadowing to the twists, there was no hints that there was more than what appeared. This was a poorly plotted, badly written “saga” that still didn’t make any sense even after the reveals of everything dropped. Even worse, it’s not over.
Spoilers, but Peter Parker doesn’t appear in the non-flashback parts of the story until the final page. And there he is, all righteous fury, ready to confront Norman Osborn. It’s a twist that has happened a million times in comics, and it’s a cliche that yawn-inducing not exciting. This epilogue didn’t actually resolve a thing.
So what’s next? Damned if I know, but it’s likely to disappoint.
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.
