The Amazing Spider-Man #7: The Hellgate Has Opened

The Amazing Spider-Man #7 picks up right where we left off, launching into an issue of relentless, fiery action that quickly disrupts the newfound optimism in Peter Parker’s life. Joe Kelly ditches the standard rogues gallery here to instead introduce a almost Thor-like villain that pushes Peter against a wall in exactly the kind of high-concept, high-stakes predicament Spider-Man stories thrive in. While the setup is near-perfect on paper, the execution falters—leaving me wishing for an issue that lived up to its promise of tension where it instead dies in a ‘just another Tuesday’ style of decompression.

Kelly does succeed in juggling multiple threads of plot setup alongside the kinetic chaos of Spider-Man struggling against a force far beyond his mortal reach. The ideas are there, and the pacing is undeniably brisk, but the impact of Hellgate’s debut lands with a thud rather than a bang. The villain’s presence feels undercooked—more a narrative placeholder than a fully realized threat. The time it takes to really kick-off the issues main premise is egregious in its banality, adding little to a threat that is never given any juice to truly be taken seriously.

Intentional or not, the parallels to Morlun’s debut are impossible to ignore. From the art team to the structure of the conflict, it echoes the same premise: a godlike adversary throwing Peter into a meat grinder. But where Morlun’s every blow felt visceral and terrifying, Hellgate lacks that same narrative weight. The stakes don’t register in the same way, and the damage—emotional or physical—just isn’t there. It’s easy to imagine that future issues might flesh him out, but as first impressions go, this one is hollow.

Part of the problem lies in the issue’s bloated format. With four pages sacrificed to editorial self-congratulations and more to the usual ad clutter, there simply isn’t enough real estate for Hellgate to establish himself meaningfully. Remember folks, this is a five dollar comic with no more than twenty-pages of mediocre, decompressed, ‘been-there-before’ storytelling.

What remains is padded with jarring transitions, unnecessary flashbacks, and a puzzlingly erratic use of Felicia Hardy, whose role in the arc feels increasingly inconsistent. The precision and tonal balance that defined Kelly’s first arc now seem more like a fortunate accident than a creative throughline. The pacing here is both sluggish and rushed—the exact contradiction that derailed the last run before it ever found stable footing.

Still, there’s something admirable in Kelly’s effort to peel back the layers of Peter’s mind mid-crisis. The emphasis on intellect over instinct—on Peter’s mental agility alongside his physical one—has quietly become one of this run’s strongest features. These internal moments give weight to the chaos, elevating sequences that might otherwise feel like empty spectacle. It’s a welcome bit of character work that showcases why Kelly is a fit for the character, even if his actually plotting is a bit lackluster here.

John Romita Jr., meanwhile, is here on art duties, but his work here feels mismatched with the script’s mythic ambitions. Whatever nostalgic pull his return might’ve once held has long since worn off. His heavy lines and street-level grit are poorly suited for this brand of fantastical bombast. The contrast is especially stark coming off Pepe Larraz’s explosive energy in the run’s opening salvo. Romita’s panel layouts are still solid, and the coloring helps smooth some of the rougher edges, but visually, this isn’t the book it needs to be. His past work with characters like Tombstone during the Wells run showcased his strengths better—grounded tension, expressive brutality—but here, those tools just don’t connect. This is shocking, as Romita turned in pretty great work whilst illustrating Thor, so the fantastical elements should not detract from his ability to produce greatness, and yet this was his most cartoonishly soft work to date.