The Amazing Spider-Man #67: All The Stops

The Amazing Spider-Man #67 is not a bad comic, but it is a boring one that has fallen victim to its editorially set pacing. With this issue, the “Eight Deaths” storyline continues to slow down to a crawl as Peter remains staunch in his college freshman cynicism, which has struggled to place Peter’s true voice at the center of this internal battle.

Outside of that, the arc continues to waste time with crossover characters that aren’t used to their full potential. Doctor Strange is here to expound on a threat even greater than Cyttorak and explain the truth behind his covenant, but it doesn’t raise the stakes of this story. Much like Peter, it’s been hard to continually care about the themes and writing of “Eight Deaths“ because it keeps dragging itself through repetitive and depthless scenes that have nothing new to add to the narrative.

The X-Men are really only here to eat up page real estate so that the issue doesn’t have to focus on Peter. You don’t get a great sense of their personalities, nor are they tied well into the narrative with meaning, aside from the loose connection between Juggernaut and Cyttorak.

The art is unimpressive, but it’s not like Andrea Broccardo has much to work with on a scripting front. The coloring by Marcio Menyz is what really steals the show with this issue, making up for Broccardo’s lack of character in his illustration style, which we’ve seen before in previous chapters of this story.

This arc has frankly fallen into a state of disassociation where it can’t decide what story it wants to tell. So much so that by the end of this issue, when we see the introduction of our biggest threat so far, there is no tension. It’s a new boss for Spidey to take down, not an actual antagonist. It’s video game writing at its worst, made even more sour by the fact that this isn’t a video game. Whether it’s true or not, it really feels like this story has been as long as it has not because it needs to be, but because editorial needs it to fill the void until legacy issue #965, so that they can re-launch the book on a landmark number.