AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #633
“Shed, Part Four”
Writer: Zeb Wells
Penciler: Chris Bachalo and Emma Rios
Inker: Tim Townsend, Jaime Mendoza, Victor Olazaba, Mark Irwin, Chris Bachalo, and Emma Rios
Colorist: Antonio Fabela
Cover Art: Chris Bachalo and Tim Townsend
Variant Cover Art: Mike McKone and Jeromy Cox
Be warned – there are SPOILERS ahead!
The Plot
The Lizard continues to cause people to go bananas. Spider-Man, with the aid of Connors’ serum, protects himself from the Lizard’s mind control and uses a bit of it to try to turn the Lizard back to humanity. The Lizard saves Spidey from death by mob. After a brief moment of clarity, the Lizard runs away. Peter and Aunt May patch things up.
The Good
Finally! Not only does this seemingly interminable arc end, but we also knock out the Negative Aunt May story too!
YAAAAAHOOOOO!!!
**AHEM**
The Bad
Not surprisingly, the conclusion to this arc was as poorly-written and nearly as poorly-illustrated as the first three parts. While not quite as sickeningly awful, it’s still a pile of dog doo.
Right off the bat in the opening scene, we get another rape. My God, did we really need this? This is pretty much the rapingest Spider-Man story already, even before this issue hit. My God. And before the sycophants tee off on me with cries of “it was consensual!” you should chew on this: it’s considered rape if the victim is deemed of unclear mind due to drugs, alcohol, etc. The law doesn’t quite cover having your brain commandeered by a human-sized, cloak-wearing, reptilian supervillain with mind-control abilities, but I’m willing to bet the court would probably consider this one in the “not of sound mind” category.
Spider-Man’s “plan,” if you can even call it that, involves trying to turn the Lizard back to humanity through a combination of Connors’ formula (the one the Doc was using to suppress his transformation at the start of the arc) and an appeal to his human side. Spidey’s plan for protecting himself from the Lizard’s mind control is to use the formula on himself – because, as he says in the issue, “If it works on him, it has to work on me, right?” I … just … wow. Isn’t Peter supposed to be an intelligent guy? You know what, nevermind – that’s too dumb to even dignify with a discussion, so let’s just move on.
Spider-Man gets jumped by a mob of Lizard-controlled Manhattanites, and Spidey doesn’t fight back because he’s afraid of hurting someone. Now, I live in New York City. If a mob of people jumped me with bad intentions (probably rape … I mean, there’s not enough of it in this story already, right?), mind control or not, I’m going to go down swinging. What’s worse, causing minor injury to a bunch of people trying to kill you dead or getting murdered by a ravenous mob because you’re too much of a weeping sissy to defend yourself? Forget about whether or not this makes sense in the context of the story, this doesn’t even make sense in any context on this planet. Punch those bastards!
At the end of the issue, we finally get resolution to the Negative Aunt May subplot that’s been brewing for far too long. Peter talks to May, who slips in and out of her negative persona, and she finally snaps back to the real May permanently. Wait, what? Since when was Aunt May swapping back and forth? In all the previous appearances, she was permanently stuck in her negative persona. That doesn’t make a lick of goddamn sense.
Then again, none of this issue does …
The art shows flashes of competence for a change, but overall it’s still a very poor effort by Bachalo. I couldn’t even tell what species Spider-Man was supposed to be half the time because his head kept changing shape so drastically. In one panel, his head looks like a deformed, oblong watermelon. Amazingly, despite two pencilers and a whopping SIX inkers, the book still shipped late. If Bachalo spent time drawing things like proper human anatomy and backgrounds, I might understand … but drawing a bunch of amorphous shapes and calling them Spider-Man doesn’t cut it.
Hey, wait a second – didn’t Wells promise that this would be a big Black Cat arc? Where the hell was she? Outside of a cameo at the start of issue 630, she didn’t feature in this arc at all …
The Ugly
This really doesn’t relate to the issue specifically, but this is a good spot for me to get it off of my chest: this might be the worst Spider-Man arc that I’ve ever read.
It’s bad enough that they’ve managed to completely and utterly ruin a classic Lee/Ditko villain, but they did it in one of the ugliest, most ploddingly-paced travesties of a story arc that has ever been printed. Rape, murder, an illogical plotline, rape, bad art, decompression, and rape – a winning combination!
The Bottom Line
This issue isn’t as bad as the two previous ones, but that’s like saying that the best way to be executed is via lethal injection – it still really, really sucks. 1 out of 5 webheads.
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I think Spider-Man stories, in particular this last one have become extremely violent an dirty. If I really wanted what I watched and read in story arc I’d probably look for the newscaster… And, yes, the art is terrible, I think Bachalo is not the best for Amazing Spider-man, because Spidey simply didn’t look “amazing” drawn by him. A goog point: the Aunt May’s and Mr. Negative idea was really interesting…
Greetings from Quito. Ecuador, South America.
God this issue was horrible. The vomit-inducing art of Chris Bachalo just made it even more atrocious. His art is so ugly and confusing that it made my eyes ache. I am not even sure if I understood the story as the writer intended it. I hated it. I hated it. I hated it. By the way, is the negative Aunt May subplot resolved? if so, how why so quickly (in just a few panels) and in such a nonsensical way? She disappears from the titles for a while, her negativity is not addressed and then all of a sudden, she pops up and decides not to be negative anymore?! Really? Did we miss anything? Why did they even bother to introduce such concept in the first place?
Great now if only Peter can talk to Anti-Venom and fix his Negative problem I’ll be set (if he’s returned to oridional Venom). Not the best arc but I think its better than people say it was. The Art was terrible, and the permanent change in The Lizard will need to be fixed, but the story did have a continuous theme about morality vs desire.
You forgot to mention rape. . .
One of the themes running throughout this story was the power of family and human emotion on the brain. The now human Lizard has begun to feel and in recognizing what he did to Billy Connors, experiences shame/grief/sadness about killing his child and it overpowers the reptile behaviors to kill and hunt and so forth. This is also subtlety emphasized when Peter basically comes to May at his absolute lowest and leads to the combat between Aunt May and Anti-May. Ultimately love wins out and the two embrace. I doubt this is the end of the Anti-May fallout, but it is a nice capstone to what until this week had been the most emotionally difficult Spider-Man stories in some time.
Two reviews in one day. You are a machine!!! Thanks as always my friend!
So now the Lizard is just a one-dimensional animal with mind control powers who can’t turn into a human or anything like that? why didn’t they just bring in a dinosaur or something instead of raping(excuse the pun) one of the great Spider-man Villians?
Wow. I can’t believe this is the gunk that is being released in their best selling character’s book.
@Jonny, I’m not caught up on all the recent ASM arcs, but i did read Shed b/c of all the discussion around it…anyway, the Anti-May subplot was definitely featured in ASM 630 (phone conversation btn May/Peter) and it was covered on the intro pages for ASM 631 & 633…that was about it…so it wasn’t totally from out of nowhere, but it certainly wasn’t seen throughout the arc…but, i got the feeling that the Anti-May subplot was not completed at the end of this arc simply b/c of how easily she rid herself of the ‘negative vibe’…i could be wrong, but i’d bet we’ll see more of it in the upcoming issues…also, I think Spidey thought that if Connors’ formula could (at least temporarily) suppress the Lizard from taking over Connors brain than it should suppress the Lizard from taking over Spideys brain via the R-complex, i guess that the assumption there is that it should be more difficult for the Lizard to take over Spideys brain compared to Curts’…I’m certainly not defending this plot/arc…but i figured i’d at least share some possible explanations for the characters’ actions…
All said, I’m glad this arc is over too…
@Tiger Topher: I deliberately excluded mentioning the letters page because frankly, it brought my piss to a boil.
Gerard, I’m surprised that you didn’t have anything to say about the last page of the book. Also, did you happen to read what Wacker had to say about Shed on the first of the two letter pages? For those of you who missed it, he basically says that the whole story has been one of the highlights of his time on the book and that he couldn’t be happier with the work that was done on it. That’s kind of interesting considering that even supporters of the current direction have been bashing this arc.
So…this all falls back to the same old plot device of spidey trying to making the lizard take a formula that we’ve seen countless times, even in cartoons? Even though in this case he was taking the formula before hand anyway and it didn’t do him any good?
Was it ever referenced that he missed a periodic taking of the formula at all or anything that’d justify why the formula would work now? And what human side is he appealing to, the guy just killed his own god damn son, any humanity in him is gone on to the farm upstate, hell that was the NAME of the arc after all; “shed: the DEATH of CURT CONNERS.”
So now there’s a rogue lizard running around the marvel universe….anyone else think that’s just really dumb?
@NickMB: The fact that we can even have this argument sort of makes the point about how awful these stories have been.
@Jonny: I’m talking about the formula that Connors was using at the start of this arc to suppress his Lizard persona, not the traditional Lizard formula. I should have made that a little more clear, so I’ll go back and edit in a bit more detail. 🙂
As soon as I read “Peter And May patch things up” in the plot and “An end to the negative aunt may story” I just thought
“Hold up, Gerard hasn’t mentioned any progress at all in the negative aunt may storyline in recent issues up to not….. He must of forgotten about that subplot amoungst all the raping, ” Then I wondered how the hell a story were lizard turns all manhattan into rapists could tie into aunt mays condition? Seems kind of out of left field, maybe all aunt may needed was a good rough shag to shake off the negativity or something like that.
But no then I get to the bad and my worst fears are realised, gerard didn’t go into detail about it because it simply there’s no detail to go into, it’s just a badly plotted out story point that comes out of nowhere and doesn’t make any sense, typical, just typical.
Gerard if you don’t mind me asking, what exactly is the formula that spidey injects, from the way you talk about it it sounds like Conners lizard formula which seems like….a pretty god damn stupid idea
The above comment should have said “several times rapier than this story”, as obviously I’ve not read this particular issue. But anyway.
I’m afraid I still hold to my conviction that Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do was several times rapier than this issue. That aside, I’ll refrain from judging until I’ve read it.