The Amazing Spider-Man #27: A Potential Turn Around

It’s hard to quantify just how much of a shrug The Amazing Spider-Man #27 elicits upon first reading. It’s an issue full of brushing over past story threads and setting up some more for the future that threatens to repeat stories of old. However, with all the various mechanical failures this run on Spidey has been subject to, from poor pacing to surface-level plotting and storytelling, there’s something trapped beneath the surface of this issue that, if touched upon, could slowly turn the title around for the better.

This issue opens with Black Cat and Spider-Man out on patrol, crossing paths with The Shocker as they stop him from fulfilling an unnamed ‘criminal job’ that Cat had set up for Peter to blow off some steam after the death of Ms. Marvel. From there, we get caught up with Norman Osborn, Doc Ock, and even J. Jonah Jameson as all three intersect to form what promises to be a classic Spider-Man tale that begins in the next issue.

Starting off with the positives here, Zeb getting to return to character-focused writing, something that has not gotten to occur in an honest and additive way since issue #8 of his run, restored some faith in him as a Spider scribe. While the same surface-level decompression issue, as seen in every issue of this book exists and really hurts the story here, the moments between Peter and Norman are genuinely human. From a plotting standpoint, Wells is finally picking back up with some massive plot threads from The Amazing Spider-Man #6 (LGY #900). Those threads form naturally here and tie together well, so I’ll give credit where credit is due. Unlike issue #26, this is a competently made book with a narrative drive stemming from our main characters.

That’s about where the positives end, but those that have been reading this title and have felt the severe lack of world and character-building will see some of that finally occurring here, at least with regard to Norman. The promise of Jameson being involved is another huge plus, as the title has been missing the human drive that Peter Parker and his side cast bring to Spider-Man. There doesn’t seem to be a separation between Pete outside and Pete inside the mask anymore, but this issue brings that back. There’s a dichotomy between how serious and angry Peter is at the beginning of this book as Spider-Man versus how he is when he’s just Peter talking with Norman. The human connections between these characters have been sorely missed within the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man, as the character becomes nothing more than a lightning rod for action figures and misery porn. The closest we’ve gotten to seeing Peter’s life matter in the modern day was in Spider-Man #9, a book that manages to integrate human drama into the superhero shenanigans excellently.

However, the negatives here still stand to cripple the plotting and writing in this issue. For starters, Zeb’s treatment of Felicia is still pretty boring and wasteful. Just like how she was during the Beyond arc, as well as issues #19 and #20 of this run, she’s only here to serve Peter. We have spent zero time with them as a couple in this run in any way that was deep or formative, the post-Dark Web filler arc a lackluster attempt at justifying these two being together in the modern day. Getting past the character regression, she’s made out to be pretty manipulative and irresponsible here with how she thinks beating up a crappy villain, who had yet to be doing anything wrong since the book opts to not tell you exactly what Shocker is doing, will help ease Peter’s complicated reaction to the death of Ms. Marvel. That itself falls by the wayside almost immediately, sweeping it under the rug when it clearly could’ve been handled with a bit more subtlety. It plays into the worst parts of this run, which is the touch-and-go surface-level plotting that has plagued this book since day one. due to bouts of hyper compression and then lethargic decompression, Well hasn’t been able to build a true world around this darker status quo for Peter, and nothing has changed here. The book and the world around it remain empty and unfulfilling, not unlike every other piece of story in this book.

While everything with Norman was well written, it’s a shame it’s mostly a big bout of summarization spinning out of Chris Cantwell’s Gold Goblin series. None of that emotional depth Norman’s been struggling with came out from Wells himself, and when he gets a chance to play with it here, he pens some pretty words that ultimately add nothing to the concept. The Doctor Octopus teases are fine and borderline fun, but making Otto a cartoonish psychopath in such an unbelievable way is a massive exaggeration of who that character is now after all the development Dan Slott had given the character. For the sake of the story, it’s easy to ignore, but the book is lost up its own ass with surrealist ideas that its tone has been irrevocably broken.

Ed McGuiness is not a good fit for this story and never has been. While at a technical level, his art is pitch-perfect, it’s stylistically not a fit for what Zeb’s been doing. It shatters tonal and atmospheric consistency in big ways, hits art fundamentally changing how certain characters, such as Otto, come off.