The Amazing Spider-Man #686 Review

 Spider-Man has failed in his mission to save the world, and now Symkaria is burning because of it…or is it? Plus, Mysterio and Chameleon yuck it up, a switch up with the Avengers, and Mary Jane…BUYS A NIGHTCLUB?

ENDS OF THE EARTH PART 4

Written by Dan Slott

Illustrated by Stefano Caselli

Colored by Frank Martin Jr.

Lettered by VS’s Joe Caramagna

THE PLOT: Spidey, the Widow and Silver Sable are all aghast at the flaming result of Doc Ock turning on the world…only that it turns out to be a trick by the Mysterio. Chameleon disguises as Ock and attacks the heroes, but the ruse is seen through pretty immediately.

LONG STORY SHORT: Spidey convinces Mysterio to join their team and help save the world. He leads the heroes to Guatemala, where they’re greeted by the mind-controlled Avengers.

MY THOUGHTS: My thoughts are the same as before. This is not good.

The recurring problem with Ends of the Earth is how utterly basic it is. The story isn’t the most original thing ever, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It is in this instance, and with every issue, Slott feels as though he’s having so much fun writing the story that he forgot to sit down and give it much thought. He just keeps going and going and going, meanwhile several questions come up.

1. If the whole Symkaria in flames thing was a ruse by Mysterio, why didn’t Spider-Man’s spider sense go off? He says his sensors weren’t working, but his spider sense should have.

2. I still can’t get over the fate of the planet being left in the hands of six scientists from New York. Why don’t they enlist the help of other potential scientifically minded people across the globe via satellite?

3. At what point did the Black Widow suddenly know this secret of Chameleon’s that we’ve never heard about until now? While it’s easy (and going by the nature of the book, logical) to assume it’s because both are Russian, I figure it’s a spy thing. Still, we’re just now learning this? And she’s not used it to have S.H.I.E.L.D. go after and arrest this top-ranked Communist spy?

4. Doctor Octopus has apparently been planning this scheme since issue #650, which was around January 2011. During all that time, it never once occurred to Mysterio that Doc Ock plans to kill everybody? Of course, he could always turn on the heroes in the next issue, and Spider-Man even predicts that he might. With that in mind, why is he free to roam around and hypothetically do whatever he wants in the heroes’ ship? Why didn’t they imprison him like they did Sandman or at least tie him up so he couldn’t try anything?

5. On that note, if Sandman’s doing all of this for the sake of his supposed daughter, wouldn’t the thought of Doc Ock possibly destroying the world occur to him that it would involve killing his little girl as well? She might’ve fried when Ock attacked New York just to make a point. So with that being said, and having known that Spider-Man is aware of Sandman’s daughter, wouldn’t he enlist his help as well?

 

  These are the things that  tend to adorn Slott’s writing. Everything I questioned is convenient for the issue’s plot, and that’s a crappy way to tell a story. It relies on character contrivances rather than logical behavior for believable people. If this is a story that has people trying to save the world, so many thing would have happened either already or before it was time for them to be introduced at exactly the right time. Uatu Jackson figures to go after Ock’s base, several days after they first attempted to try and find the satellites. We’re  supposed to buy that  in a room full of geniuses no one thought to do that. It undermines their intellect while we’re supposed to roll with the idea that these people really are some of the smartest people in the country.

Undermining is a big theme here. The whole ruse of the destroyed Symkaria is ruined because of a gag panel with Mysterio and Chameleon. Chameleon, dressed as Doctor Octopus, goes into battle and vocally complains to Mysterio about the explosion Silver Sable threw at him, ruining the disguise. It plays like a cartoon, and I’m not even sure if it’s meant for laughs or to honestly further the plot. I will say that I liked Mysterio and Chameleon’s scenes in this issue. They were the highlight of the book because they just were not taking the situation seriously. Quentin Beck was trolling the super heroes and he was loving it. He wasn’t played to be villainous, he was played to be a jerk, and that was funny. But when their plan and their success relies on them acting seriously and they fail because they don’t, to quote Doctor Octopus, it becomes a total farce.

The tone of the story is another problem. As I said, there’s nothing inherently bad about doing a simple superhero vs. super villain plot. Part of the fun of comics is how it gets to be basically WWF wrestling for nerds with the superpowered throw downs. Every Marvel crossover in the past 25 years has been about that. But this is not 1994 anymore, and you can not do epic storylines without emotionally engaging the reader. The word “epic” should evoke a sense of have the floor beneath your feet beginning to move, and a feeling of a loss of control while being excited to see what happens next. This story, just like Spider-Island, has tried to evoke the suspense and wonder that classic storylines like “Death of Gwen Stacy”, “Dark Phoenix Saga”, “Secret Wars” and even “Civil War” have all done, and it falls flat. Part of that may be due to Marvel’s tendency to market everything in the Stan Lee manner, where everything ever means the world will irrevocably change. At the same time, there are people right now including “Ends of the Earth” in the same conversation as those aforementioned storylines, and it just is not true. This is not a great story, in fact it isn’t a very good one. I suppose it’s marginally entertaining, in the sense that it’s something to look at and distract you for ten minutes. But at no point could anyone honestly say to me that they thought the world was going to fry like it was shown to at the end of the last issue. There’s no suspense because the story hinges on a two-way street. Either Spider-Man saves the world or he doesn’t, and he’s not going to fail because every issue dedicates banal dialogue and inner monologue towards this new found sense of self doubt he espouses. Were Spider-Man to seriously fail, other characters would make him feel better about himself and he would get over it, or he would get a second chance to prove himself by preventing an even bigger tragedy, which would require the patience of the reader to stomach through the same type of story all over again. But as I’ve said before, none of this would be an issue if it were told interestingly, but it’s not.

Finally, Slott needs to cut this crap of having Peter blame himself for every little thing. Him making the inventions and technology that Ock employs to battle the Avengers is NOT his fault, and it’s such an OCD and anal way to view the situation as his doing that it makes him look childish and stupid. The fact that the issue ended with his realization that the tech was his an him saying “THIS IS ALL MY FAULT!” implies that he’s right. Screw that horsecrap. Ever since taking over the title, Dan Slott has been chasing Amazing Fantasy #15, which is a fool’s errand. The fact that he goes about it so badly is what makes it frustrating to read. Peter Parker has a guilt complex. That’s absolutely a part of who he is. But for him react like that in this situation is lazy and stupid. Same goes for him having active inner dialogue about being responsible and having the power to inflict positive change. Stop telling and start showing. Did anyone of you reading this log onto your computers and think to yourselves “As a person with sufficient, functioning eyeballs and an interesting in what the ASM reviewer thinks of the latest issue, I’m of course going to read his review.” NO. You just do it.

1.5/5 webs

Like it? Share it!
Previous Article

BRAD DOUGLAS ON VIEWS FROM THE LONGBOX PART 2!

Next Article

Marvel Creates Hero For Young Boy

You might be interested in …

15 Comments

  1. I’ve enjoyed Slott’s run pretty much up to this point. Spider Island was a fun time and the return of Kraven were the highlights for me. This is just become exhausting for me. I’m just very much ready for some a fresh take on Mr. Parker. I’m looking forward to the Lizard story because it seems more personal, but then of course the world will change in a way it never has come 700. I used to become excited for the centennial issues, but in the modern era it’s become a easy button for status quo reset.

  2. @#7

    You know the time you spent typing that just to waste it on him… you can’t get it back. You KNOW he doesn’t care about that. It interferes with his trolling.

    Don, I gotta address something here. When you make this complaint…

    “1. If the whole Symkaria in flames thing was a ruse by Mysterio, why didn’t Spider-Man’s spider sense go off? He says his sensors weren’t working, but his spider sense should have.”

    Wouldn’t it make sense that it didn’t, since the danger wasn’t real?

    And I’m sorry. But as many time as the New avengers have been used to bail his a** out when they were stuck for an ending in earlier books, the fact that Doc easily removes them from the equation now just bothers me. But again, the two depowered, HOT co-stars are more useful.

    @#9

    There have been so many similar parallels to TriCorp, that we’re afraid that it might happen. Doubt it will, because if it does happen, that’s gonna make them look REALLY stupid.

    @#12

    When we don’t have to spend FOUR DOLLARS ON AN ISSUE, we’ll take your opinion into consideration. But if they’re gonna cost THAT MUCH, we’re gonna expect a little more for our money.

  3. Ouch. I can’t disagree with anything you said, you impudent whelp. HA! HA! Just kidding. However, I did like MJ’s appearance in that she expressed her complete confidence that Peter would save the day (at least that’s how I took it). Really, Dan Slott should only do fun one-shots or short series. He should never be in charge of an epic or a serious book. To quote Detective Callahan, “a man’s got to know his limitations.”

  4. its one thing to review a comic… but you have to review it for what it IS. not for what YOU WANT IT TO BE.

    lol.. for a spider-man comic-rama… its ok.

    glad the artist is back. its on my jack-off list. err tug list.

  5. @9 Was just wondering out loud. Maybe pressure from JJ when he figures out Ock used Horizon tech could close Horizon or force them to fire Pete since his ideas are too dangerous? I dunno, just throwing out admittedly, stupid ideas.

  6. @reader: Why would Peter get fired from Horizon? This is certainly better than being a camera man or a school teacher. The only thing that I would love to see is the notion that Peter is in the final stage of completing his Doctoral Thesis in Bio Chemistry at ESU. This way, he can finally be a legitimate Scientist in his own right as he is using Horizon Labs to finish his Ph.d requirements.

  7. Dan Slott knows how to have fun with a book. That first issue where peter where peter got his own lab and horizon was robbed by the hobgoblin and Pete protected his identity by being an eccentric partial nudist was great. But the serious parts like I think this whole event is supposed to be, seems a little shallow. Oh well. I still wanna see Slott get back on Hobgoblin. He was doing some neat stuff with him until he suddenly dropped out of the picture for a while.

  8. @ Spidergeek – The reviewer has given positive marks to the book and the writer before so sorry, that just doesn’t wash. The criticism is valid; the tone of the book, where everything is playing for laughs, works against the attempt to build real tension with the storyline.

  9. If Pete quits or gets fired from Horizon after this, wonder if he’d set up his HQ in MJs new bar. Maybe he can invent new sound systems and light shows for MJ, hehe.

  10. This review’s too negative. It sounds like the reviewer hates Spiderman and Dan Slott. This issue was awesome and it sounds like you need to get some help from the reviewer from Spiderfan.org. I’m done with this site.)-:l

  11. I am sure that Ends of The Earth could have been just as long as Spider-Island. But remember that Dan probably had to condense a lot of stuff to make way for The Lizard story-arc to coincide with The Amazing Spider-Man movie.

  12. Even though I thought this issue was probably the best part of Ends of the Earth, you still raise some excellent points I hadn’t considered upon my initial reading of the issue. I could actually overlook the Sandman not coming to a similar realization that Mysterio did, however, because, let’s face it, Flint Marko is not exactly one of the brightest super-villains out there to begin with. You’re last paragraph regarding Spidey realizes Doc Ock was using his Horizon Lab’s inventions and thinking “THIS IS ALL MY FAULT!” was definitely one of my biggest misgivings about this issue. Particularly if THIS is going to be used as the reason for Peter to decide to quit his job at Horizon because he doesn’t want to deal with the guilt of having his inventions fall into the wrong hands. Not to mention that, considering how the Horizon Lab people also realized that Doc Ock’s satellites resembled the technology they had been working on, it’s logical for them to assume they’ll realize they have a mole in the company and guess who is going to get the blame first? Also, if Mary Jane’s “big change to her status quo” is going to be that she’ll now be running her own night club, I guess that makes sense considering how it’s also a nod back to her first job as a go-go dancer, not to mention she would be running her own business. Even so, if this is indeed the case, my initial reaction is “meh.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *