After the heartbreaking and shocking last few months in Amazing Spider-Man, it’s nice to see Spidey fight Doc Ock and have it be more or less just that: A fight. Last issue, Zeb Wells and Ed McGuinness reminded us that Doc Ock’s arms became sentient and had a far softer side than their creator. In part two, J. Jonah Jameson must save these animated arms if it’s the last thing he does. Prepare yourself for a visually stunning but mostly slow-moving issue.
Amazing Spider-Man #28 picks up where we left off in issue #27, with Jameson screaming and running into Norman Osborn’s lab seeking help for the hurt Doc Ock’s arms. Norman is against helping, but Peter comes in to argue it’s the right thing to do. It’s interesting to see these characters worrying over a machine, given the rise of A.I. as a topic these days. Not much is made of the moral element here as the heroes rush in to save the day.
The main course of this issue involves Doc Ock storming Norman’s lab. After a brief scene that showcases a major main Spider-Man villain, McGuinness gets to go nuts with the boisterous Doc Ock in all his glory. The art stands out again as a major highlight, with Doc Ock’s weird glasses giving him an inhuman quality. There’s something about McGuinness’ way of creating curved lines in Doc Ock’s face and tentacles that makes him particularly round, especially in comparison to Spider-Man. His new tentacles are also intriguing as each link has a mind of its own which is animated well by McGuinness.
It appears that Doc Ock’s new tentacles give him a huge edge over Spider-Man, which makes for a rather easy attack. It’s hard to believe Spider-Man would fall so easily, as if Doc Ock was given superior powers and intellect he usually doesn’t have in past stories. That’s comics for you, I guess.
Doc Ock looks great in this story arc.
Credit: Marvel
Joe Caramagna’s letters continue to impress in this series. The way an “eeeee!” jumps out of a word balloon of a secretary freaking out or the “gwarble” noises the tentacle links make are great fun.
And that’s all there is to it. There isn’t a lot of story here, with most of the events taking place probably over an hour or so. It’s nice to see a bit more humor in the series — something that has been mostly lacking in previous issues — but it’s few and far between. The most compelling element is learning Jameson may have bonded with the Doc Ock arms, but since that happened off-page and the arms are not factored into this issue much, it’s all table setting.
In Amazing Spider-Man #28, Spidey is metaphorically tied up with fixing robots before literally being tied up by Doc Ock. It’s a chapter that looks fantastic thanks to McGuinness’ incredible art, but lacks plot progression or interesting character work.
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