Amazing Spider-Man has had its ups and its downs (with Dark Web being it’s middest mid) this last year-and-change, and I felt pretty cold on it in general this year. I follow the book monthly to keep up, but lately I’ve been letting issues go days and weeks before reading them, then almost immediately forgetting what happened in the book. Historically, I’d then read the trade when it came out, but Vol. 4 broke that habit by being Dark Web.
Having now reread the issues of this volume, I am once again reinvigorated with joy in Spider-Man comics, confident that Wells and Romita, Jr. are feeding me with delicious food here. All isn’t perfect, but this volume is reassuring in the skill of those two, at least.
Marvel Comics
I will say, the first two issues of this collection are frustrating to reread, especially knowing what happens down the line. Typically, “filler episodes” are fun and worth the time to develop characters, or even just vent some pressure between arcs, and I understand why the team would plan a fun hot springs issue before this arc. What I don’t get is why, when they knew Kamala was a big part of their next year’s plan, didn’t they decide to use her in any way at all whatsoever? I mean c’mon, did we really need an issue fleshing out the new iteration of the decades-long romance between Peter and Felicia?
Beyond necessity, those issues were fine, but fairly boring, and I would barely even call them fun, which is presumably their entire purpose. It felt like an attempt at doing Brand New Day that basically failed to ape it in any meaningful way, especially given the long-term storytelling at play. Inconsequential, unnecessary, and not that fun!
Marvel Comics
As for the rest of this comic: good cooking. Wells and JRJR have been on a hot run this whole time, and they haven’t let up yet. The three issues they do here are each great, with some of the best action I’ve seen in comics in a while. Frantic, kinetic, brutal, and fun action that dominates the page and leaves Peter mushy in the process. They’re great – they never stop being great.
My favorite is when it all coalesces in issue #23, with Peter running around, trying to figure his way out of his mess. There’s a gorgeous swinging sequence, and then a confrontation with Captain America that’s tonally perfect for the characters and situation, and just a generally cool Spider-Man moment that I’ll no doubt one day be tired of from getting posted to death on Twitter. Nonetheless, Amazing Spider-Man #23 will probably go down as one of my favorite issues from this year.
But these too, are not all perfect. I think the structure where the issues jump between the present and past worked in single issues but doesn’t work as well in this collection. I also think that the actual story here is a bit sparse, which is more noticeable when this is really only half a story.
There’s some here to like, but really, this thing is just a mess. It’s good enough to get me back to reading the trades, and excited to read the single issues again, but even with the high that is #23, the lows of #19 and #20 are bad enough that I’d rather forget their place in this pretty good Spider-Man run than critique them further.
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