As a longtime Spider-Man fan with nearly three decades of web-swinging reading under my belt, I have to make a confession: I’ve grown kind of fond of the J. Michael Straczynski era. Despite the “Original Sin” and “One More Day” fiascos, JMS’s run on the character in Amazing Spider-Man did have some pretty great character-focused moments amidst the at time ridiculous retconning, and it’s a bit of a shame that his run has been marred by those two stories. But everything old is new again as Straczynski makes his return to the wall crawler in The Amazing Spider-Man: Torn with artist Pere Perez. The nostalgia really only matters here in the sense that JMS is back on Spidey though, as the tale feels more in line with the “untold tales” types of stories Marvel has been doing with these miniseries.
Set during Peter’s days at Empire State University, Torn finds our wall-crawler coming across a new villain named Evangeline. After tampering with a mystical book they were hired to steal, Evangeline has become a winged gargoyle monstrosity looking for a cure for her condition. This naturally leads her back to ESU where the book was being housed, and is currently under protection from one Peter Parker, who is currently trying to balance (what else) school and super-heroing. And judging by his current life, he’s doing it badly.
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The Evangeline aspect of the story is really a side story to something else, and something that the subtitle not so subtly suggests: Peter’s feelings towards Mary Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy. It’s here where Stravinsky bends known continuity to his story, as in this tale Peter and Gwen dated for a bit and broke up, which leaves Peter single but not quite ready to mingle, and his feelings for Mary Jane, while reciprocated, are pretty complicated. Peter and MJ clearly have a love for one another, but there’s also unsaid and unfulfilled love between Peter and Gwen too. This leads to a surprisingly engaging and at times moving look into the world of Peter Parker at a time where no one really knew his secret identity, but obviously had their suspicions. The constant push/pull between Peter and Gwen and MJ is more dramatic than I was expecting, and one of the few times where a switch in the continuity for the sake of the story works pretty well, even if I personally still prefer the “actual events” where MJ was a flighty party girl in this era.
That being said, it’s clear that JMS has a preference between the two ladies in Peter’s life. Gwen, as well written as she is, is really an afterthought to Mary Jane here. Now, as a tried and true Mary Jane guy, on the one hand it was really great to have a thoughtful and fleshed out depiction of the character, full of layers and regrets and hopes and dreams. But on the other hand, it feels like it’s a bit of rewriting to try and lessen the importance of Gwen Stacy and her relationship with Peter. If Mary Jane is comfortable sitting with Aunt May to discuss a potential future with him, where does that leave Gwen? She’s in a somewhat okay relationship with Harry, but it feels like she’s more into Peter still, and there’s frustratingly little time for the Gwen side of the love triangle, which makes me wonder if Straczynski put such a focus on MJ as a way to apologize for “One More Day”, a story that is still causing ripples twenty years later.
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The rest of the collection is a really fun, casual Spider-Man read, and a lot of that comes from Pere Perez’ stunning pencils. Perez has a great eye for action, and his depictions of Spider-Man swinging through New York fighting criminals, helping people in the city, or just sitting with a coffee are really great, and makes me hope he gets a chance to jump up to the main Amazing Spider-Man book soon. It’s not often that you can find an artist who can balance the action and human drama of Spider-Man as well as he can, and I’m very excited to see where he goes from here.
The Amazing Spider-Man: Torn is an interesting book. For as much as some aspects of it annoyed me, there were an equal amount of moments that felt “right” to me as a Spider-Man fan. For all his faults, Straczynski is really great at crafting Spidey’s dialogue and showing how important he is to the people of New York. And the way he upended my expectations with Evangeline and her story was really interesting, even if it ends with another “big ray pointing to the sky” kind of battle. But the Spidey fan in me who is almost too hyper focused on the chronology of the character was still a little thrown by the decisions Magistracy made on this. To be honest, I think five issues wasn’t enough to really delve into the aspects JMS wanted to go into. An eight- or even six-issue miniseries would have given more time for the love triangle to feel more balanced, but then again, this is the first time in a long time that the human drama side of Spider-Man has been as engaging as it should be. I guess if I had to sum up my thoughts on this story in one word, I’d have to paraphrase the great Australian songstress Natalie Imbruglia by saying: I’m torn.
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