Amazing Spider-Girl #26 Review

Hello Good Folks! Spideydude here filling in the blanks so to speak. In spirit of our wonderful interview with Our Pal Sal Buscemea, and besides the fact that BD is breathing down my neck just like Wacker does Brennan, I figured that I needed to get caught up on our Reviews. Now, in Prep for this, we’ll have tonight the Review for 26, Tomorrow will have 27, and Thursday will have 28 (This week’s issue) Also there will be an announcement regarding me and my personal future in reviewing for this site come Thursday. So this week is not only a celebration for Sal, but for his most recent contributions to the Spider-Mythos, Sal’s inking Chores on ASG.

Without Further Ado, I bring you..

Amazing Spider-Girl #26
The Replacement!
Tom DeFalco
Ron Frenz
Sal Buscema

Let’s do a quick recap: May is seemingly out for the count. Nu-May, as I’ve called her, is trying to get into the swing of things with her ‘life’.  We also had Arana come into May’s Body and take over. Our issue opens with the Black Tarantula learning of May’s so called death. We also find out that May is on her own spiritual journey, with a Blonde haired woman, who seems to know all about May. (One can assume that this is the Original May, Reilly-Parker.) Anyway, her journey goes from Mountains to a Mall after Mayday complains about it. As she goes along with all of that, she encounters Mall Rats. (More on that later) Oh yeah, Peter is going to be the Heir to the Osborn legacy, Nu-May is going to play Spider-Girl, May wakes up as Arana, and she finally accepts her legacy as Spider-Girl.

THOUGHTS: Okay, where to begin. First let me say I usually spend most of this time talking about what I liked on the issue and I usually take a very small part to say “Art’s good” and move on. Giving how this is the Sal Week here at the Crawl Space, I thought that I need to spend more and more time congratulating Mr. Ron Frenz, who is one the Industry’s most underrated artists, and Sal, who just celebrated his 40th year at Marvel.

When Ron first started on this title, full time, he had a slightly exaggerated style that wasn’t as good as his classic storytelling. As the first series progressed, this toned down, and with the relaunch, it seemed to me that he adapted his style to fit more into the classic elements. But even before the relaunch, the style was no more changed than on the last 25 or so issues. It was around this time that we got Sal on the book for the Inks. With that, they have brought out the best in each other, to be completely honest. They’re working hard to give this title, as a standalone series with Mayday Parker, the send off artistically it deserves. This issue and the following were beautiful. Simply put. They didn’t have a bad panel all go around. Now onto the Actual writing of the story.

I love Tom. That’s plain as day, him and Sal are very special to me in the sense that they wrote and drew my very first comic, Spectacular Spider-Man 223. Now I read Tom doing such a great job on this title, but even then, I had some reservations on this issue.
Mall Rats? Really? Not going to lie, that was a groan moment if I ever saw one. Most of the readers of this title would’ve gotten this reference, but a little 10 year old girl wouldn’t have gotten it, to be completely honest.  So on the sole basis of this; I knock off a point for just that. Despite that, the story is moving forward, but it is a bit slow, but still, we have 4 issues left, and we still have a lot of answers to get:

1) Is Peter the new Goblin?

2) Arana and Spider-Girl going to switch back?

3) What of Normie and Fury?

4) Will we get to see Nu-May and May go at it? Again?

Time will tell.

Rating: 3.5 Out of five.

See to next time!

Excelsior!

Spideydude