Amazing Spider-Man: Torn #5 – Yet Another Day

There are only so many times one can return to their past until it stops being romantic and starts becoming tiresome. The Amazing Spider-Man: Torn unfortunately winds up echoing that sentiment with how reductive it feels as a return to an era for the character that is often waxed poetic for, but never quite well understood. For me, JMS and his time with this title did get the closest in balancing the melodrama of that time with the expectation of modern comic book writing standards. He has a knack for bringing a sense of realism to the personality of Peter Parker and his extended cast, elevating the kind of caricature writing that was prominent during the Stan and Romita era of Spider-Man.

That being said, it’s what surrounds the characters in this series that really held it back for me. Where JMS succeeds in writing Peter Parker, he continues to place Spider-Man in situations that either crumble under the consideration of continuity or just outright misunderstand how the character’s relationship with the supernatural works. Although this title is supposed to be a little glimpse into the past, it features a large-scale cosmic event that sees Peter having to stop an alien invasion via a magical book that acts as the key for said invasion to progress. Throughout the mini, we are consistently divorced from the engaging struggle of Peter, Harry, Gwen, and MJ attempting to maintain the status quo of their love while true adulthood pulls at every fiber of their ability.

As the mini went on, Harry himself grew to have this small yet emotionally powerful arc that calls into question exactly why—and what it is about—the classic quartet from this era that kept them constantly depending on one another for validation. MJ has an excellent arc of growth that leaves us with a bittersweet recognition of both her love for Peter and a real agency in her own life. All four of them have experienced love in such a broken, idiosyncratic way that attempting to pen an actual story on the subject is not only interesting, but a bold move to make with an era of the character that folks are so very protective of.

This all comes crashing down, though, when one feels forced—or just can’t help themselves—to interject it with an antagonist that may be thematically reflective of the subject matter, but completely fails to work within the tone of the book’s true driving force. Our villain, Elizabeth, at least gets to fill out an arc that is somewhat charming on its own. Frankly, it took way too long to grow her character dilemma into something that actually had some weight of its own, instead of its initially shallow motivations at the top of this series. The art was very strong at communicating the kind of panel pacing JMS typically aims for in his scripts, both with the drama and the “move the car, George” comedy that has become a staple of his work.

Pere Pérez captured some strong imagery here as well, and for as much as I did not care for the overall antagonist of this story, when it came time to illustrate a world-ending cosmic horror, he did pretty darn good. There was a certain lack of style, though, that I think would have elevated those character-driven scenes all the more. His work feels very “house style” in the same way this era of the book would’ve been illustrated, but with how different JMS’s take on this era was, a more stylized approach would have potentially eased the tonal fracturing this story underwent.