Amazing Spider-Man #34: Trust Me, I’m a Doctor

I’m not sure how I feel about this issue of Nick Spencer’s Spider-Man. Unfortunately, I won’t know until I read two other books. One is 2099 Alpha, and the other issue is the next issue of Amazing Spider-Man, That might be cheating, but that’s because there’s a lot going on here. First and foremost there’s an assassination attempt of Doctor Doom, the Spider-Man of 2099 pops out of nowhere and there’s also Peter Parker’s homework assignment. Yeah, really. Peter Parker has homework. Kinda puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? In my opinion, the best storyline in this issue is Spidey dealing with Doctor Doom’s assassination attempt. It’s classic Marvel writing. All the trademarks of both Doom and Spidey. Their hatred of each other, Doom’s hatred of everyone that’s not his mother, and it crosses over with the current Doctor Doom mini-series. Pretty great for being only 33% of the page count. The “fun” storyline would be Peter Parker having to continue to develop an invention that predicts the future. It somehow figures out all the possible outcomes of anything, then figures out what dimension we’re in, so it knows which outcome will be the one that happens in our reality. Apparently it needs a pretty big power source, and Pete has to figure out how to get it working. Then, there’s another storyline. Spider-Man 2099 shows up from the future, tells Peter some pretty big stuff, then disappears as quickly as he came.

Another issue by Marvel newcomer Patrick Gleason! This issue is another home run by Gleason. He’s taken to the Spider-Man universe very quickly and very well. He perfected his craft over at DC, and now all of us Spider-Fans are reaping the benefits. If I had to give a criticism, it’s that his inorganic stuff looks a little off. Not bad or weird, just a little askew of the rest of the page. It almost looks like it’s from a different comic book series. He pulls off a couple of great double-page spreads this issue that are quite frankly, breathtaking. He also makes some really dynamic art choices this issue. He plays all the way to the edge of the page on some panels and shortens up some others, it all adds up to an awesome book to look at. Gleason is up to his usual awesome standard this month.