Amazing Spider-Man #23: Lover’s Rock

Expectations are a hard thing to manage. With sequential comics, creators are constantly fighting to outdo the story readers have already been writing in their heads in the weeks between releases, and when you’re writing The Amazing Spider-Man, that battle is made even more difficult. Folks have been ravenous to see Peter and Mary Jane finally reunite after the two have had their lives completely upended, and unfortunately this issue doesn’t quite match the explosive potential of their meeting that many may have been hoping for. Seeing as how it happens in the early issues of a crossover event with multiple moving parts, this should have been expected, and peering past the disappointment of expectation, you wind up with an issue that is a ton of fun and rich with classic Spider-Man storytelling.

Kelly has struggled with repetition in his character writing on this book, oftentimes stretching a dilemma out for issues on end without really going beyond the surface of what those conflicts mean thematically. His approach to Norman Osborn over the last few months is the best example of this, and it seems that Death Spiral is being infected by this as well. Due to the nature of this issue having to keep up the momentum of a crossover event and continue to pick up the pieces of the main title, his plotting is being pulled in a million directions. We open up here once again swirling the drain on May and Peter’s relationship with a charmingly written scene that does take away from the page count available to the other major moment in this book: the meeting between Peter and MJ.

This moment is what this event has been hinging on. The new villain may be pretty dope in design, and the threat of Carnage knowing Peter’s identity is rife with potential tension, but we’ve been hungering to see how Peter and Mary Jane reconcile given the fact that both of their lives have been radically derailed in one way or another. There is so much history between the two, especially when it comes to the Venom symbiote, that it was a bit disheartening that their big scene in this issue comes down to a two-page conversation that barely scrapes the surface of the weight it should have. Peter devolves cartoonishly into panic in a way that feels out of character with how Joe has been writing him over the last few months.

There’s a lack of intimacy to the whole thing and a disingenuous trust in continuity that hurts to read. MJ referring to Ben as “Peter’s clone” and not by his name, as though the two don’t have a long history with one another, continues to highlight just how careless this editorial team has been with the history of these characters as a pair. Once again, I’m left asking why Marvel even continues to keep MJ around for a series of diminishing returns. The answer to that is probably variant cover sales, but I digress. The moment itself is still well-written given its role in the event. It unites the two, alongside Eddie, in a new fight against Carnage that places both of them under the gun of a maniac hellbent on slaughtering their entire genealogical line.

Ed McGuinness’ art during the fight that leads up to this scene is exquisite. Frankly, the whole issue is a kinetic treat with action choreography I absolutely drooled over. The script throughout is full of great one-liners and character interaction that had me fully engaged in the fight. The introduction of more villains and the two pages we get with Eddie set up a great ticking time bomb amidst the already hair-raising mystery behind Torment’s motivations. Although we only get two pages of Peter and MJ genuinely talking, everything that surrounds it in this issue is a masterclass in illustrating a high-octane, feel-good superhero epic. If only Joe had the time to give each scene in this issue the depth it deserves. We wind up in the same place with May, barely exploring the emotional gut punch of Peter x MJ, and get little to no time really developing the true conflict at the heart of this crossover.