A new creative team has taken The Amazing Spider-man back to basics, he’s broke, lonely and a pariah among his peers once again! On the surface it may seem like they’ve undone years of character development, but not so, in fact those years of development are now biting Petey boy in the backside!
Title: The Amazing Spider-man #1 (Back to Basics pt. 1)
Writer: Nick Spencer
Pencils: Ryan Ottley (YAAAY!!!!)
Inks: Cliff Rathburn
Colors: Laura Martin
Publisher: Marvel Comics
What You Need to Know:
Spider-man is back to square one, couple of jerk roommates, crap job, college, it’s like the last 10 years never happened besides the fact everything Pete did wrong for the last 10 years is crashing down around his ears!
What You’ll Find Out:
We open on a flashback to a touching moment between classic black suit Pete and MJ, Pete talks about how this is his happy place, his happiest moment. Pete’s beautiful dream is cut short by his idiot roommate Fred playing video games at full volume at 5 AM. Pete flashes back to a recent fight with the villain Boomerang (back in the FCBD special, blink and ya missed it) and rues the day he let Boomerang go at Mayor Wilson Fisk’s request, because if he was in jail he wouldn’t be on Pete’s couch being a jerk. Pete’s new roommate is a supervillain, is what I mean to say.
We cut to why Pete is tired, a giant fight with a horde of alien bugs, overrunning the Avengers, the X-men, some free agents like Ben Grimm, Daredevil and Doctor Strange and so forth, Iron Man pages his “outside help” the GOTG sit up in their ship naming species trying to figure out what the aliens are, Hawkeye cuts them off as they are extremely not helpful. Suddenly Spidey swings on the scene with a bad joke to the cold shoulder from all the other heroes.
This splash page blew my mind I love it!
We cut to a previous encounter with tons of fun himself Wilson Fisk, Mayor of New York (fat jokes are ok if they’re evil supervillains, something spidey himself taught me) where Fisk gave Spider-man the keys to the city, after he leaves Fisk says he did it so the other heroes would hate Spider-man and make him easier to defeat, genius!
Ha! Star Wars Joke!
The end of this issue is surprising to say the least, discover it for yourself pick up a copy of The Amazing Spider-man #1 today!
What Just Happened? (Spoilers)
Holy Craaap I loved this issue! It felt so perfect to me start to finish it’s just a Spidey story updated for the modern age. Multiple things I didn’t like regarding changes made in the last few years have been either disregarded or are actively screwing Peter after the fact. I also absolutely love that all the other heroes hate him right now, back in the silver age Peter was a total heel every time he met another hero for some reason. It felt perfect with him as the pariah.
The roommate situation is a total example of what makes Spider-man so great and relatable, who hasn’t had a crappy roommate who did all kinds of annoying stuff but you basically tricked them into paying like 70% of the rent? This is the Spidey I grew up with, he’s broke, alone and has a crap job, he’s just like me! After years of doing it they seem to have figured out shaking up the superhero Marvel got perfect from the start isn’t what the fans want, not that I hated Dan Slott’s run, he had plenty of decent Spidey stories, there were just lots of moments that didn’t feel quite right, Parker Industries being the worst offender.
Secondly, I’m really glad we seem to have reached the end of one of my least favorite trends in any kind of media, the promotion of doomed romances. You know Superman is ending up with Lois Lane, you know Reed Richards is ending up with Sue Storm, likewise, you know Peter Parker ends up with Mary Jane Watson. Why even bother introducing a random man or woman you know we’re going to hate just to play up the charade like the story might change, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, comics don’t change. They pretend to while telling the same 10-15 stories on a loop for decades, and we LOVE IT!
The art in this issue by Invincible’s Ryan Ottley is just as fantastic and detailed as his work on the aforementioned title, which he drew something like 120 out of 144 issues of. I do wonder if in this issue they asked him who he wanted to draw and he said “everyone!” because he drew EVERYONE this issue! Dream come true for a fan and a creator alike I figure. One nitpick I’ve seen some folks have that I can kind of see is how MJ looks almost exactly like Atom Eve from Invincible, which is a fair assessment I’d say, although Atom Eve is kind of a Mary Jane type redhead if that makes sense.
I do have to say, this issue is arguably the funniest thing I read last week, I had so much fun reading this I can’t wait for the next issue!
I still don’t understand this quote, but this is officially the funniest possible use of it.
Rating: 9.5/10
Final Thought: A great story for fans new and old and a great point for fans turned away by the previous creative team to jump back into Marvel’s greatest solo book. It feels like I never left.
If anyone ever wants to contact me, look me up in my groups for the love of comic books and New Fans, Old Comics, I also have several comic pages dedicated to my various true loves, Batman, Superman, Sword and Sorcery, Indie Comics, Spider-man, Marvel, Oldie Goldies, and Hats! (Long story on that last one haha) or on Twitter @johnbatusijack
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