Peter Parker gets a new beginning! Again! But really it’s a pretty fun launch. Amazing Spider-Man #1 is written by Joe Kelly, drawn by Pepe Larraz, colored by Marte Gracia and lettered by Joe Caramagna, with backups written by Kelly, drawn by John Romita Jr., inked by Scott Hanna, colored by Marcio Menyz and lettered by Caramagna.
Tony Thornley: It’s April, and that means it’s time for a new volume of Amazing Spider-Man! (OK, it isn’t that bad.) And to talk about it, here’s ComicsXF’s Spider-Team!
Scott Redmond: I mean it’s not that bad, but it’s also not not that bad. See what you made me do there, Marvel? The only character with more new volumes to their name is the Punisher. Let that one sink in for a moment.
Rasmus Skov Lykke: I’ve figured it out, folks.
Marvel (and to a lesser extent DC) is strapped to a bomb, and if they let a single series reach 75 issues, it’s going to blow up. Here we are, taunting them and complaining about constant relaunches, when they’re trapped in a deadly publishing reenactment of the 1994 movie masterpiece Speed. It’s cruel, really.
But speaking of things that are cruel, let’s check in on Peter Parker’s life!
Brand New Day
Tony: One common conversation we’ve had about Spider-Man is how sick we are of him losing. I mean, Marvel talks up Peter Parker as an everyman whom everyone can relate to. Yet he can’t get a job, his dating life sucks, he’s depressed. It’s a vicious cycle that’s frankly tiring to go through.
So immediately Kelly gives us Peter getting his shit together. He’s interviewing for jobs. He’s helping Aunt May move into a new place. His newish relationship with Shay is going well. This is legitimately the most optimistic a Spider-Man story has started in a LONG time. There’s a mystery here, and some bad stuff, but it’s ALL costume stuff. I have to applaud Kelly for kicking it off like this.
Scott: On the one hand, the sigh that came out of my mouth at references to Parker luck and Peter being apparently the only hero so busy he can’t even sit somewhere for 10 minutes was loud. On the other hand, I agree with what you’re saying here, Tony.
Peter having to start over again is quite tiresome. At some point, Marvel decided the struggling everyman bit of him was his full persona and that means he has to be the saddest sack around. We crave relatable heroes, but I also don’t need to read a book where one of my favorite characters gets nothing but crap rained on him even in the best of times.
Rasmus: There is something to be said for putting the hero through their paces. Pushing them. There is little drama in things working out and everyone being happy. But as you both point out, at this point it’s practically cliche how down on his luck Peter is. Nothing works out for him anymore, and it’s frankly astonishing he still keeps going. That is one of the core tenets of Spider-Man, that no matter what, he keeps getting back up, but in regards to Peter’s personal life, it’s definitely starting to strain the suspension of disbelief. Especially when run after run starts with him being at his lowest and slowly clawing his way out.
Scott: What Kelly offers here plays with that but takes it further. It actually puts him in a position of trying to do things and accepting the fact there will be stumbles. It still points at the Parker Luck because he’s not quite “cured” of it, but the man’s doing better. Sometimes that is all we can ask. Additionally, I do like that Kelly referenced the various previous attempts we’ve had to let Peter actually have a solid career or life path that inevitably blew up (some figuratively, some literally), both for the continuity keeper in my brain and for the attention to worldbuilding.
Tony: Oh, for sure. The plagiarism scandal and the Parker Industries implosion are both important parts of Peter’s history. Both are kind of bullshit ways to revert the status quo, but I’m glad they’re being acknowledged instead of ignored.
I enjoyed the hell out of the art in the lead story, too. At first I was a little worried. Larraz’s wooden Peter Parker was a little disconcerting. But then I realized he was drawing him that way on purpose for effect. I wish there was some narration to match, so it wasn’t so off-putting for a couple pages, but once I got past that, I really liked it.
And when the story shifted away from the job interviews, we got to see Larraz be the Larraz we love.
Scott: So glad I’m not alone here! I gotta say, I was sweating profusely reading those first few pages wondering if something was greatly off with Larraz’s artwork. I was about to ask if maybe they had stretched Pepe too far and it was starting to show itself here. But then it made sense and hot damn the rest of it was gorgeous.
Rasmus: I have to say, I wasn’t as nervous as you guys. I actually liked the opening pages, showing us Peter Parker through the eyes of potential employers. Of course he comes off as wooden and uncomfortable to them. Because he is. And then Kelly and Larraz juxtapose it with the intercut panels of Peter as Spidey, showing him in his element. Which Larraz of course absolutely nails.
Scott: Dynamic just doesn’t even feel like an accurate enough word for what Larraz does at this point anymore. Every moment is a reminder of why he’s been working so much the last handful of years. When it comes to Spider-Man books, I’m either looking for the big, bold, grand, fluid artwork or the really stylized, exaggerated, plays-into-the-chaos-that-is-Spider-movement artwork. So this series definitely ticked that box for me.
Tony: As gorgeous as it is, I do have to say that Gracia needs to cool it sometimes. He’s an amazing color artist, doing some of the best work in the industry. The way he textures Peter’s costume is awkward though, because each square is being colored like a panel, not flat fabric. It’s distracting.
Big Time
Tony: I love seeing Peter get a new job with a fancy title (as an HR person in the real world, I have a love-hate relationship with fancy titles). Now, I will say it’s weird that it’s RAND, a corporation so closely tied to another superhero, AND that the job offer has nothing to do with said hero (who is technically dead right now in current comics, though that hasn’t been mentioned or acknowledged since last year).
I can’t tell if that’s refreshing or concerning, though.
Now despite a retconned childhood friend of Peter being the person who got him the job, I do like this. Peter gets a new gig, he’s going to get interrupted by a villain, without a doubt. But I love that this doesn’t kill the new job. Balancing the job and heroics is looking to be an actual plot point in the series.
Scott: This demonstrates how little I know about a lot of what is happening with current Marvel (as it is steadily losing my interest). I assumed the aforementioned other hero was going to be the contact. Because one, I didn’t know he was dead, but mostly two, it would have made the most sense. Especially because of the comment about it coming from a very high inside contact.
It also speaks to how disconnected Marvel has become outside of obligatory crossover events. I’m not saying I need everyone to be in each other’s books all the time, but the shared universe aspect feels more like lip service than it ever has before.
I’m torn on the retconned friend. There are elements that speak to reality, about how we lose contact with people and find them later in life, helping us get a job or hanging out or doing whatever. So in a way this does work for me because it has that air of realism to it and it fits the story. Conversely, I’m just kind of over Peter’s cavalcade of retconned past connections. But I’m willing to give Kelly room to play with it and see how it works out.
Also, can my man just be allowed to work and succeed a bit? I swear, Spider-Man is the only hero who can’t even just have half a normal life because his rogues are rampaging all day, every day. I still maintain that the Horizon Labs, come-and-go-as-you-please think tank gig was the best fit for this vision of always “busy” Spider-Man.
Tony: Yeah, I agree. This doesn’t have that flexibility built in, but it does have a good dramatic hook: How does Spider-Man balance his day job with the webs? I don’t know if that’s the direction Kelly is going to go with that side of the story, but it has the potential to give it a little more heft. It also sets up a conflict we don’t see in Spider-Man as often as we see in more modern comics — Peter Parker’s life versus Spider-Man’s.
Rasmus: Honestly, that might be my favorite part of this entire issue/relaunch (besides Larraz’s art): the focus on the Peter Parker side of things. We get his job hunt, him hanging out with Aunt May, him at the new job and his double date with Randy and Shay. Not counting the two epilogues, the issue actually has an even split between Spidey and Petey scenes.
Tony: Oh yeah, we’ve barely mentioned Shay, but she’s rapidly becoming my new favorite love interest since Carlie Cooper.
Rasmus: I’m all for superheroics and awesome, epic, hardwon Spider-Man battles. But the thing that sets Spider-Man apart from most other superheroes is the focus on his life as Peter Parker. I’m very happy to see Kelly acknowledge this and appear to focus on it going forward. These parts of Peter’s life aren’t just meant to be hindrances to his superhero life, they’re just as essential to the story. For many of us, they’re a major part of why we buy the comic.
Not that we don’t enjoy seeing Spidey kick butt!
Tony: But hey, the fight between Peter and a rampaging, nearly brainless Rhino was just fantastic art and writing.
Scott: That’s true! Bonus points to Kelly, again, for doing due diligence and referencing that this isn’t like the Rhino of today, a Rhino who is somewhat fond of and pallish with Miles Morales, after all.
Hobgoblin Lives
Tony: OK, so it appears the series villain is Roderick Kingsley, with a mysterious, ultra-powerful partner. I think Kingsley is one of the most underused Spider-Man big bads. Sure, Norman Osborn and Otto Octavius are classics, and when you want to do mob stories, you gotta do Hammerhead or Tombstone. But Kingsley is the best of both worlds, and in my mind, he’s one of the scariest Spider-Man villains when done right.
So it turns out the source of Rhino’s power bump (which IMO wasn’t super well-explained in the issue, one of the few marks against it) is Kingsley and his mysterious partner. I’m looking forward to this developing, especially because Peter almost immediately runs up against the partner.
Rasmus: I didn’t read Rhino’s rampage as due to a power bump, but more a drug-induced one. It seems connected to what is going on with Randy’s job and the people he meets there. Though I will agree that it’s probably not just an ordinary drug. It rarely is, in the Marvel Universe.
Either way, Kingsley is an interesting villain to use, for all the reasons you mentioned. His most interesting stories have placed him as more of a mastermind, which very much seems to be the position Kelly is putting him in.
A drug-peddling superpowered mastermind, pulling the strings behind the scenes, inducing rampages in Spider-Man’s rogue’s gallery? That’s a great hook for this story all on its own. Add the mysterious shadowy partner, and it’s almost too much. Which is why I actually like that the partner is already attacking Spidey. Not every aspect of the story needs to be a slow-simmering mystery.
Scott: The funniest part about the Hobgoblin/Roderick Kingsley is that he gets far more use than a great number of Spider-Man’s rogues (including some well-known ones), yet he is underused or misused in many respects. I can recall more uses of him in Spider-Man and other books over the last decade than others, but not one of them actually seems solid in my mind. There are whole issues and scenes of far too many Marvel Comics that I can pull out of the brain file right now. Most of the Kingsley or Hobgoblin ones that I know happened are mostly blank. Pretty wild.
Anyway, I agree about going for a villain like this. Especially since we’re keeping with Norman Osborn being reformed, which we all know will revert at some point because STATUS QUO, but I hope it lasts for some time longer.
Rasmus: Honestly, I had forgotten it wasn’t already overturned. I know Zeb Wells did that whole Spider-Goblin storyline, and I completely blanked that it didn’t end with Norman back as the Green Goblin.
I definitely agree that this status is more interesting. Peter having to be friends with his greatest enemy because it’s the right thing to do, as Norman actually has turned over a new leaf and is seeking to make amends, is much more interesting than them constantly fighting. It’s a very different test of his heroism, and seeing him rise to the occasion is inspiring. Especially as it also appears Kelly is interested in the question of whether everyone deserves forgiveness, as seen in the backup story.
Scott: The power bump and what seems to be a drug racket feels both right for a street-level Spider-Man thing but also off for some reason. It could be the fact that every run for the last umpteen years has been about going “BIG, NO BIGGER!” in many respects.
I’m curious who and what this partner is; (literally) shadowy beings do bring intrigue. Fingers crossed the reveal isn’t too stretched or disappointing.
Tony: Yeah, the fluid, shadowy nature of it almost feels like a symbiote, doesn’t it? We know it isn’t Venom or Carnage, but could it be one? Maybe.
Spider-cents
- John Romita Jr. felt wasted on the backup story. None of the beats took advantage of his artistic strengths. I get that he’s going to continue on the book (which I’m very happy about), so it would be weird to have a fill-in artist for this. But still …
- The texts from Spider-Boy were an interesting touch, as he hasn’t really been a part of the main Spidey titles at all.
Buy Amazing Spider-Man #1 here. (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.)
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. Follow him @brawl2099.bsky.social.
Scott Redmond
Scott Redmond is a freelance writer and educator fueled by coffee, sarcasm, his love for comic books and more "geeky" things than you can shake a lightsaber at. Probably seen around social media and remembered as "Oh yeah, that guy." An avid gamer, reader, photographer, amateur cook and solid human being. Follow him @scottredmond.bsky.social.
Rasmus Skov Lykke
Rasmus Skov Lykke will write for food (or, in a pinch, money). When not writing, he spends his time with his wife, their daughter and their cats, usually thinking about writing. Follow him @rasmusskovlykke.bsky.social.
