Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1: To Limbo and Back

Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 is sure to please fans of Halloween or Zeb Wells’ current run on The Amazing Spider-Man, but it feels hollow. It’s a shortsighted issue that reinforces plot beats from previous stories, setting up little and being dissatisfying. While it is essential to note and respect the technical promise displayed by the majority of the team, it’s challenging to remain positive when witnessing the current state of Spider-Man and its editorial continuing to erode its respectability with shock jock writing and a lackluster status quo that seemingly no writer has been able to move past.

The first story in this double-header annual is penned by Hallow’s Eve author Erica Schultz and artist Julian Shaw, who have left their artistic mark on Marvel over the last year, working on Spider-Man and Marvel Infinity-related titles. Despite their growing art experience and Schultz’s well-reviewed work with Janine Godbe, their story is rife with technical issues that hinder the few positives the story does have.

From her first work within the world of Spider-Man, it has been evident that Schultz has a strong grasp of Peter, Janine, and Ben’s characters. However, due to the current status quo for all three, they struggle within constraints set by editorial mandates. Peter comes across as an unsympathetic and selfish brother to Ben, hypocritically treating Janine as a villain for merely wanting to help rescue and psychologically recover her love. He even makes a passing comment to her about how she should be in jail, all the while continuing to work with Norman Osborn, a genuine serial killer who has yet to genuinely pay for his mistakes after having them blasted out of him by a magical shotgun.

Frankly, it’s this kind of nonsensical plotting that can develop from a disorganized editorial team and a form of story development that comes from unnaturally forcing an idea onto ongoing, serialized characters that have been continuously shunted and regressed for no reason other than preservation of status quo. It’s genuinely saddening to see, as both Schultz and Shaw have done great work within this world as recently as this year, but the moment that talent crosses over into Peter’s world, it all melts away. The main story within this annual fails to push the needle forward for either Janine or Ben, giving them nothing to work with as she tries to break him out of Limbo. However, thanks to Madeline Pryor’s rules, it’s impossible for her to do so. Shaw’s art is inconsistent at times, with proportions being distractingly off, and in one instance, Janine has a prominent four-fingered hand. Furthermore, the coloring mixed with Shaw’s art style gives the book a plastic and ill-atmospheric look.

The same problems can be seen within the second backup story, which boasts some great art from David Lopez and solid pacing/dialogue work by Celeste Bronfman on the writing front. However, it’s another instance where it goes down a nonsensical, almost cartoonish route with its plotting that puts Mary Jane at the center of another story that simply reeks of misery, and not in any sort of natural way.

Everything in this annual was forced and needless. It’s difficult to see great creators with so much potential be shafted onto annuals where they’re bound by the constraints of a lesser team’s work. Seeing as how Marvel has never given a female writer a chance to have a full run on Amazing Spider-Man, it’s extra heartbreaking to see women working on the series in some capacity stuck in a status quo that’s been mired in controversy due to its belligerent and thoughtless treatment of female characters. Thankfully, we see both MJ and Janine given more agency in this issue than they’ve been afforded recently.