AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #650
“Big Time, Part 3”
Writer: Dan Slott
Penciler: Humberto Ramos
Inker: Carlos Cuevas, Victor Olazaba, and some other dude
Colorist: Edgar Delgado
“The Final Lesson”
Writer: Dan Slott
Penciler: Neil Edwards
Inker: Scott Hanna
Colorist: Morry Hollowell
Cover Art: Humberto Ramos and Edgar Delgado
Be warned – there are SPOILERS ahead!
The Plot
In the untitled third chapter of Big Time, we pick up straight from last issue as the Hobgoblin has Spider-Man dead to rights. However, some timely intervention from one of Peter’s co-workers saves him. Hobgoblin escapes with a sample of Reverbium and brings it to Wilson Fisk, leading Fisk to hire him. The remaining Reverbium at Horizon Labs is destroyed. Peter asks the Black Cat to steal back the sample taken by Hobgoblin. Phil gives Norah video of his Hobgoblin activity, but she doesn’t react as he had hoped. Carlie and Mary Jane visit Peter at Horizon Labs. Black Cat interrogates a criminal from the goblin cult, but he feeds her information that the Hobgoblin ordered him to. Spider-Man shows up to help her in his new costume.
In “The Final Lesson,” Mach-5 (formerly the Beetle) arrives at the Raft to discuss the case of Mac Gargan with Professor Folsom. Over the course of the short, we learn a bit about Gargan’s condition before the truth behind Professor Folsom is revealed – it’s really Alistair Smythe in disguise! (Smythe killed Folsom earlier.) Smythe kidnaps Gargan and brings him to a secret lab, where he promises to make “improvements.”
The Good
Once again, I’m impressed with the formula that Slott is using to tell this story. He has managed to weave in a number of characters and subplots without making everything a chaotic jumble, crafting a meaty read. Everything ties together in some form or another, but they remain distinct enough to be interesting in their own right. For example, the Phil/Norah subplot ties in to the main Hobgoblin story, but it also exists on its own in the periphery. This style of storytelling is one of the more enjoyable facets of Big Time to date.
Peter’s new job at Horizon Labs is really starting to gel. He feels RIGHT in this setting, and Slott has really made an effort to integrate it into the story as fluidly as possible. We’re also beginning to see some differentiation amongst the other Horizon employees, which is certainly an improvement over the vanilla TriCorp crew. Bella gets so much face time in the issue (and even the recap page!) that I honestly wonder if she’s being set up as a potential love interest.
The Bad
Unfortunately, though I like the formula that they have laid out, the actual content of the story fails to deliver on a number of fronts.
For starters, Slott and Ramos go to great lengths to make Spider-Man look like an incompetent idiot around the Hobgoblin in order to justify the existence of his new suit. It’s absolutely for story reasons, remember – it’s just a coincidence that he’s now wearing a very Tron-like costume the same week that Marvel’s parent company is releasing a Tron movie. It’s not contrived at all! Spider-Man has two “fights” with the goblin in this issue, the first of which is a continuation of last issue’s cliffhanger. In both, he easily gets his ass handed to him by somebody with little experience as a supervillain. It’s the common “make new character look badass by having him/her whale on a superior character” trope, and as I’ve discussed before, I absolutely hate it.
Speaking of things I greatly dislike, the Carlie/MJ scene was pretty appalling. For starters, Mary Jane is played to be a complete idiot, from nearly revealing Peter’s secret identity to being incapable of even making out the words the Peter and Carlie are saying. The more annoying thing, however, is how Carlie is suddenly capable of discussing advanced harmonics and wave propagation with somebody on the level of Peter, who at various points of the arc has been labeled a “genius.” Again, Carlie is played as somebody so perfect and special that it makes me want to gag.
Phil/Hobgoblin is written to be very shrill and annoying. I get that Slott wants to call back to the early, giant-ears-and-broomstick days of the Green Goblin with his portrayal of Hobgoblin, but it comes across as forced wackiness. That’s a persistent problem when he’s such a large part of the story, both as the main villain and with an additional civilian subplot. He also creates a black hole of logic in the story, forcing other characters to act in ways that defy reason. For example, Ben Urich sees his nephew at The Daily Bugle and makes note of his suit, and Phil makes a vague statement about his well-paying job. However, Ben never asks him what that job is, nor does he even seem concerned that Phil has suddenly become a big spender. I don’t know about you guys, but if I started walking around in fancy suits and talking about how much money I was making, everybody I know would be up my ass 24/7 about it until I filled them in on all the details.
The backup story was a little weak. It wasn’t bad, but it really didn’t do anything for me. Much of it was simply recapping Gargan’s recent development, which is old news for someone that’s been reading the whole time. It’s a nice primer, I guess, for the upcoming spider-slayer story (assuming Gargan plays a large part), but as a standalone story it’s not very compelling. The art was good, at least – which is more than I can say for the main story.
The Ugly
Pop quiz: what’s the point of the following two panels?
That second one in particular is perplexing. What is she trying to do, exactly? If she’s trying to lay low, it’s kind of counter-intuitive to stick your ass so high in the air. If she’s trying to get a good vantage point to watch below, why is she hunched over like that instead of just crouching in place?
Oh, right, it’s just more gratuitous cleavage shots. Silly me, trying to apply storytelling logic to this.
The Bottom Line
This issue is the weakest of Big Time so far – it doesn’t leave much of an impression or inspire a sense of anticipation. 2 out of 5 webheads.
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Ok, I’ve read about half of the replies to this review but here’s my take.
The Milk bath, because that’s what it plainly is, is hardly pornographic. You can hardly see anything. SHoulders and a bit of cleavage. You see more with her costume (and Wonder Woman’s and Storm’s and anybody wearing a bikini for that matter). It’s no big deal. It’s unusual to take a milk bath but not unheard of and what’s so bad about it? In this instance, I think reactions are way over the top. It’s long been established that her sexuality and comfort with her body are part of her character and this is not an outragous scene. There have been far worse.
The second scene is, I will not argue, a sexualised image for sexualisations sake but again, it’s in her nature and It didn’t surprise me as she has been written as the type of person to do that for a long time. It’s not that big a deal.
Judgementalism in this case is reflective of sexual derogitism where anything even remotely sexual is considered inappropriate (even though somebody was beheaded in the last issue). Seriously, this is nit-picking for the sake of nit-picking or worse, genuine outrage at the portrayal of sexuality. For shame.
On to the other scene, the one with MJ and Carlie. I’m no Carlie fan, actually I can’t wait for the character to be killed off. Having said that, are people here really saying they think MJ understands the science-talk peter espoused? It’s not her thing. It doesn’t make her stupid (and anybody who thinks it does, well that says a lot about you doesn’t it), it just means it’s not her feild of interest. I’ve been with my GF four years now and does she understand string theory? No, but she can put me to shame with psychology. MJ knows way more about her world, the fashion and acting world, than either Peter or Carlie. Switch the situation and have Peter stuck between MJ and the Carr guy while they discuss inflection, motivation, timing and a load of film talk I wouldn’t understand myself. Would Peter look stupid? No. He’d look uninformed, which is exactly how MJ is portrayed when she says something about the fashion world that goes right over the heads of Peter and Carlie.
And to defend Carlie in this panel, loath though I am to do so, there is no reason she wouldn’t understand what Peter was saying as she has consistently shown herself to be science-savvy. Is she as smart as Pete? No, he still had to explain some of what he was doing.
This whole scene is a way for Slott to write around the stuff he too doesn’t understand (tech-stuff) while highlighting in a simple fashion MJs irritation at being third wheeled. I know Carlie is a useless tool of the EIC and agree she should be done away with (eventualy, let her run her course, it’ll make it better when she is tossed/killed) but these negative comments above are clearly biased and fuelled by perfectly understandable OMD/BND/OMIT hatred. Just see them for what they are though, not everything is an attack on MJ. Slott has made a point of keeping MJ in the title for a reason and it looks like it’s because he likes the character from what I’ve read.
Sorry about the rant but I think people were taking a few things a bit too seriously here and it gets on my nerves when sexuality is villified or writers get attacked due to bias against the decision of their bosses (like when a waiter gets stick for un undercooked steak)
@Tom_Winstone – Even though Carlie IS ‘officially’ Pete’s girlfriend now, I think that the situation you mentioned [about your girlfriend being in the over-her-head situation] might actually be a foreshadowing method implimented here. As Gerard Delatour II already said, the subtle additions of new characters and flowing technique Dan Slott is quite the breath of fresh air, especially after the final two issues of BND. I believe that he purposely put in the “horrible” Carlie/MJ/Peter scene just to get people to see how Carlie should be the friend while MJ should be the girlfriend. I try to see things in a different light, so plz correct me if I’m wrong, but if I’m right, then I think when Peter tells Carlie about him being Spidey, there will be quite an interesting development.
Haha, nope, not the same person. I’m tempted to read the play off my name and the slightly ambiguous comment as some sort of dig at me. Or, like MJ, maybe Wickpick just didn’t “get” what I was saying. Maybe next time I’ll use smaller words.
Wickpick…pickwick…are you the same person?
59.
Way to go laying out your “analytical/evaluative approaches”….. on a Spider-Man comic.
59.
It is more of an outlet really. If it makes any difference, I like Ramo’s drawing style more than I do most other artists and am very glad to see him back on Spider-man. I don’t have much against Slott’s writing, other than what I’ve mentioned above (and which many have pointed out as editorial influences), and I am one of those that have an easy time forgetting the stories I heartedly dissagree with. That said, I am an invested fan of the character and the marriage. Now I’m not saying Spider-man have to be married for me to come back, but I do take issue with the cronical alienation of MJ. It didn’t help to find out that the Ultimate Spider-man had followed 616’s example and removed MJ as the primary love interest, and then have Spider-Girl (the only Marvel character left that I felt at ease with) removed in favour of a new one. Lets just say it is hard not to blame Marvel at some point.
57.
It is not so much mocking MJ, as it is mocking the fans that prefere MJ. And even though the conversation was a realistic one, the only reason I could see for the red lines, was to rub our noses in the fact that Carlie is more like Peter and there for better suited for him than MJ (which they’ve done so many times now that I’m actually angry because of it. Ok, I’m fairly paranoid about Marvel and MJ at the moment. I just have the impression that they want us to forget they were ever together by removing any and all traces of their relationship). It is being done so often, and over such a long periode of time (not just the Carlie thing, but the entire ‘Here is MJ! So let’s have Peter hook up with someone else as fast as we can!’ thing), that it is just insulting for those that are waiting for changes to happen, so they can start buying the book again. I am actually biast here, as I am irritated as hell right now due to unstable internett connection that falls down every five minutes on top of the Carlie/MJ thing.
The old adage of “the text reads you more than you read the text” comes to mind here- as it often does when I read the opinions on this site. From my point of view, there’s nothing insulting in suggesting that MJ wouldn’t understand high falootin’ science talk. She’s not a scientist. And it’s funny how the review doesn’t mention (nor have many posters) that Peter and Carlie get pointed out as being equally uninformed of the pop culture reference that MJ makes as she leaves the scene. To me the scene reads like a mildly clever commentary on the awkwardness of hanging out with people who move in different worlds of knowledge – one that makes sense thematically as Peter moves deeper into a world of people with similar scientific interests and backgrounds.
Those reading it as an insult to MJ want to read it that way, based on (to oversimplify) their lingering distaste with the post OMD direction of the title. In other words, that distaste colors all their interpretations. I want to be clear that I am in no way criticizing those who read insult to MJ here, nor am I suggesting that those like me are reading it “correctly.” There is no “correct” way to interpret this or any text. But, if i may (and to oversimplify again) this is the nature of the debates on this site. People holding on to grievances of the past that color their every interpretation of current events versus those who more or less want to give the title the benefit of the doubt and try to evaluate the title on the merit of where it is now. Again, no side is right and no side is wrong. Both sides represent a very different approach to textual analysis- approaches that can not be rectified with one another.
Finally, I think Gerard does a heck of a job with these reviews. But if you buy into my theory of the two analytical/evaluative approaches that I laid out, I’ve often thought it would be nice to balance out his opinion with someone whose evaluations are less colored with dissatisfaction about the past. On a site with people from both camps, it feels like there is room for two reviews an issue. A nod to acknowledging that balance may help alleviate some of the tensions that sometimes arise.
@Wheatcakes I didn’t say there isn’t fanservice in it, I just trying to point out that seeing “Doggystyle” is looking way too much into it.
I’m glad I was able to start a civil discussion about what we talk about and people have seem to get my point like Epidot.
I didn’t take the scene as Peter and Carlie deliberatly mocking MJ. I thought the stuff in the red was just metatext. It happened during the recent clone saga arc with the raptor when Ben visited his boss’s house for dinner. I think it’s a short hand tool the writers use to get out of having to write boring science talk, they neither they nor use would understand.
I thought it was actually a good represention of a real conversation. When my friends come round and talk about our interests my girlfirend does just sit there thinking about her own stuff, as MJ did.
Why so much fuss over the Felicia panels? They are unrealistic fanservice, like we’ve always seen in Ramo’s work. Still, that is all it is. Every super heroine is depicted to look like a supermodel or a femfatal (in spandex), and nothing is new about that (not even in Spider-man). What I find most offensive is the seemingly deliberate bashing of MJ, and complete disregard for her popularity among the fans. Not only is it so obvious what they are trying to do, it is so disrespectful and insulting to the readers that I cannot understand how this can be considered professional writing. I’ve seen fan fiction authors do a more professional character assassination than what Marvel is currently trying to do. The only reason that I can see why Spider-man still sells, is because it is an established character that people have come to love. Is it any wonder people are angry at Marvel? Anyway, one thing is clear. Who ever it is that urges these MJ bashing scenes into the comics, should never ever have anything to do with the product. Be that writer or editor. They clearly don’t have the needed competence for story telling. I mean, Spider-man doesn’t even have the collective focus point for the readers anger to distract them from seeing how bad it really written. It could be that they are trying to make MJ into that focus point, the way they keep bashing her, but that only shows how little they’ve understood of the concept (can’t be done with a character who is undeserving of the slander). I just hope it is editorial influence at work, and not the writer. Any writer willing to write it (like that) isn’t worth the paper they are writing on.
Sorry for ranting.
Test. 🙂
Look, I haven’t found anything to love in the Spider-Man franchise for a qurter of a century, but this is getting out of hand! Calgon Milk Bath can change the color of water from clear to white.
http://www.goodguide.com/products/162080-calgon-milk-bath-powder-fresh-economy-size
Next, haven’t you ever seen a cat crouching the way the Black Cat is, in anticipation of something?!
http://www.thereservegallery.com/index9.html
http://www.newdicksculpture.co.uk/images/resin/CrouchingCat.jpg
http://www.dapperfrog.com/products/Crouching+Cat+with+Bird.aspx?sub=356
Mary Jane provided plenty of titillation in the series when she was Mrs. Parker and no one seemed to have a problem with that. I still love what the character once meant to me, but the franchise is damaged goods, and has been for a generation. It’s what the character once was, and can never be again, that still holds happy memories for me. Excelsior! 🙂
It’s offensive that Peter and MJ were ridiculing MJ’s intelligence. They were both acting like a pair of snots. Peter loves MJ. Only a jerk would snigger with his new girlfriend over how stupid is the woman who saved his life several times.
@#40
“Peering over the side of the roof”
No offense my brother, but come on.
@matisleonhart – Refer to post #47.
I guess the question is “Is fanservice okay in Amazing Spider-man?”
I’ve never been one to really look for it in comics, but I know others that enjoy it. It never dawned on me that the milk bath scene was fanservice, for some reason.
@Gerard I never said you didn’t. I said Fans opinion, I never mention your review. If you remember my original comment, it was pointed at the comments that came before me.