Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 1) #538 Review

Amazing Spider-Man #538
Title: The War at Home Part 7 of 7
Writer: J. Michael Straczynski
Penciler: Ron Garney
Inker: Bill Reinhold
Colorist: Matt Milla

Plot: After a brief phone call to his wife, Spider-Man throws himself into the massive super-hero clash that’s turned Manhattan into a war zone. As the resistance spars with the pro-registration heroes, Spidey muses about how ideological disagreements so often result in senseless violence and so rarely in peace and understanding.
Meanwhile, the Kingpin, using Bluetooth from prison, orders his sniper to hold off on killing Peter’s family until the hero returns from battle. Another jailbird points to the TV and tells the Kingpin to check it out, but Mr. Footnote says we’ll need to buy Civil War #7 to find out what he’s talking about.
Anyway, the sniper sleeps on the job to keep his mark’s spider-sense from going off when he arrives at the motel. When the webhead opens the front door, he trips an alarm which buzzes the shooter’s earpiece and wakes him up with enough time to make a quick shot before our hero can react. However, Peter is fast and manages to dive under the bullet with Mary Jane. We all breathe a sigh of relief. Then Peter looks up and sees Aunt May bleeding from the side of her chest.

Likes:

– IT’S OVER! I can’t express in words how ecstatic I am that after 10 issues of Civil War tie-ins over the course of a year we have finally come out the other end! Looking back at mine and Morbius’ reviews from the beginning of the event, it’s clear that it started out strong, but after months of soul-killing delays I don’t care how it ended just as long as I don’t have to look at that hideous, gargantuan Civil War banner any more. Now we can get back to regularly scheduled Spidey stories that aren’t part of some over-hyped event. Well, we can do that after the “Back in Black” event, at least. Oh, and then there’s “One More Day”. Okay, maybe there really isn’t an end in sight.

– Once again, the art takes center stage. Garney and company are making fantastic use of their extra lead time, so the characters really jump off the page. It’s ironic that in the beginning of this arc I loved the writing and merely tolerated the art, but now it is just the opposite.

– The idea of the sniper sleeping and waking up to take aim whenever someone opens the motel door is genius. It helped maintain the suspense level through what would otherwise be an unbearably slow issue.

Dislikes:

– Go to your local comic shop, pick up this issue, read the last two pages and put it right back on the shelf. Use the $3 you saved to buy ice cream. Those of us who’ve already blown that precious currency find ourselves stuck with a comic in which absolutely nothing happens until the very end. The bulk of the magazine could have been used to explore Peter’s thoughts on Civil War’s controversial ending, but Marvel opted not to reveal the battle’s outcome in this book. Instead, characters speak vaguely about it without mentioning what actually happened. Civil War #7 came out on the same day as this issue, so they aren’t protecting us from spoilers; they’re blatantly trying to sell more books, and the storytelling’s quality and efficiency suffers because of that.

– So Aunt got shot. Now what? Either she dies or she doesn’t, and even if she does the impact on readers will be severely diminished by the fact that she’s already died and come back once before. So even if JMS writes the emotional send-off we all know he’s capable of, this whole thing will have been a diversion at best. It isn’t all bad though. Like any good tragedy in Peter’s life, he can blame himself for it both because he put May at risk when he revealed his identity and because the bullet was intended for him. If he hadn’t have focused on saving himself and MJ, it would have hit his much-more-durable body instead. As long as we don’t have to suffer through too much Parker self-pity, some good story potential has been created. Unfortunately, potential for the future doesn’t make this current issue any better.

– It looks like this series is falling into the disturbing pattern of hitting us with shocking twist after shocking twist to keep the story and reader interest afloat instead of using compelling plots and good character development. This particular twist isn’t even that shocking to begin with. I don’t know about everyone else, but I’ve hit my saturation point for “life-changing” events for Spider-Man. How can we let the unmasking sink in properly when we’re already being rushed on to the next thing?

Favorite Quote: “Part 7 of 7”

Rating: 2 out of 5. Seeing as how you already know this issue’s only important plot point from reading this review, I can’t think of a good reason not to skip it.

Reviewer: CrazyChris