AMAZING SPIDER-MAN # 665
- Writer: Dan Slott
- Penciler: Ryan Stegman
- Inker: Michael Babinski
- Story Title: “Crossroads”
This is the worst issue of Amazing Spider-Man that I have read in years. Why? Read on…
Plot
Peter and Betty Brant have a planned movie night on the first Friday of every month. Between being an Avenger and a member of the Future Foundation in addition to his regular Spider-Man solo gig and his regular job Peter has had to miss out on several of these. The one movie Betty wanted to see was in limited engagement and she finally could not wait any longer to see it. Both Peter and her boyfriend Flash Thompson are otherwise engaged that evening so she goes by herself and is mugged and beaten. Peter gets the call and goes hunting for the man responsible while all of Betty’s friends rush to the hospital. As Peter narrows in on the mugger Aunt May makes him feel bad about not being there with everyone else by throwing Uncle Ben’s death in his face. Peter feels guilty and has movie night with a now conscious Betty.
The Commentary
This issue started out with a lot of promise. It really did. I was digging on the whole “movie night” thing and was of the opinion that this was a nice downtime issue before Spider-Island kicks off.
But then Dan Slott had to go ahead and ruin it.
Surprisingly it wasn’t the mugging of Betty Brant (which sounds vaguely like a Lifetime movie now that I think of it) that bugged me. I didn’t like it and thought it was done mainly for shock value. Slott made up for this somewhat with the scenes of Betty’s friends coming to her side and Peter out beating on everyone in sight to find the guy that did it. I could get behind that sort of plot even if the foundation is kind of shoddy.
Then came the big “climactic” scene with Aunt May telling Peter that he has to be there and that she hasn’t been this disappointed in him since Ben died.
Are you kidding me?
Really?
No, really?
I can understand the whole, “Nobody except MJ knows that Peter is Spider-Man so they can’t know that he is out looking for the guy that hurt Betty.” I get that. It’s part of the whole Spider-Man thing. The thing that bugs me is that not only does Slott once again write Aunt May as if everything Peter does outside of getting a good paying job disappoints her in some way (which makes her a very unlikeable character) but he crosses a line by having her guilt trip Peter over the night Ben died. “You weren’t there for me.” So May Parker, an adult, is going to blame a 16 year old kid for having running off and being upset the night his uncle/father figure dies? Really? That’s the move you are going to pull on us, Dan? Seriosuly?
This completely ruined the issue for me. I never got why May was disappointed in her nephew. This is the same nephew that stepped up to the plate after his uncle died and became the breadwinner of the family. He’s the one that went out and got a job and beyond that he’s the one that took care of her the billion times she was in the hospital. He gave up sleep and risked the scorn of people he considered friends just to make sure she was ok. I realize she can’t know about the whole Spider-Man thing so she can’t know that Peter caught the man that killed her husband (and his uncle) and she can’t know the number of times Peter left his “great responsibility” to take care of her sometimes looking like a coward to do so I get that. What I don’t get is why May would harbor a grudge over what her upset, underage, damn near close to a son nephew runs off because his uncle just died?
You know, I have been enjoying this title for the past few issues. I had some complaints about the constant team-ups but I have been fairly positive towards the Big Time era. This issue took damn near all of that good will away and it is all because Dan Slott, the man that supposedly knows more about Spider-Man than the rest of us, takes a crucial moment in Peter’s history and uses it like a hammer just to make him feel bad. That’s not only bad characterization that is sloppy writing. I expect more from Slott. I know he is better than this.
Having Betty get mugged was a cheap stunt to begin with but to throw the whole Aunt May is a shrew thing in with it just kills any redemption for this story. Am I supposed to feel better because Peter finally had his movie night with Betty? I didn’t. In fact it made me think that Dan Slott’s main move with Peter is to have him feel bad about everything he does and that’s just not entertaining anymore. I guess the only thing I can take solace in is that Betty wasn’t sexually assaulted but given the ham fisted writing in this issue I can honestly say I was surprised Dan didn’t go for that particular plot device.
Parting Thoughts
I’m done with this issue. No real parting thoughts outside of this issue made me hate Aunt May more than ever and Dan Slott is the man that drove the final nail into that coffin. Adding insult to injury we’re given a story in the very same issue where Peter tells May that she’s the little voice in his head that tells him to do the right thing?
Aunt May’s leaving New York?
Good riddance.
0 out of 5 webheads.
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When Spidey let the guy at the end (well, near-end) I got a Lefty Donovan vibe (the guy he let go who discovered the Green Goblin hideout and led to the creation of the Hobgoblin). THAT would have had a letting-a-bad-guy-go-has-consequences story.
But he catches him the very next night? If it was that easy why didn’t he just web him as soon as he hung up with Aunt May? Two seconds, webbed, then off to the hospital.
Well, I like the cover a lot…
We have a “Bertone hates Betty” series, how about a “Michael hate May”?
@12 tickbite… I’m actually a fan of the thicker webbing. The incredibly thin webbing in the Raimi trilogy bothered me, you could barely tell it was there half the time. Logically your preference makes sense, but I like the thicker webbing because it just seems more visibly appealing.
Doesn’t anyone get annoyed by the spider webbing anymore? Looking at the scan above, Spidey is producing webbing that’s probably as thick as his wrist. When will Spidey artists get rid of that McFarlane-3D-webbing and produce something that’s thin but durable? I’m okay with it twisting around a center thread, but lately this detail makes the webbing look fake and waaaay to thick to be believable.
I’d also like to add, if May considered this time with Betty so important, why didn’t she try to talk Peter into marrying HER?
#9 Crutch, that is a hint to spider island when Carlie gets powers
well… carlie did have some goop on her spoon or fork. betcha she figures out peter is spidey. WANNA BET?
@Donovan Grant:
Oh, should Aunt May’s revelation that she felt Peter let her down on the night Uncle Ben died happened earlier? Of course, and I think the perfect time to have done this would have been during JMS’ story in Amazing Spider-Man #38/479 which was the story where Aunt May reveals to Peter that she’s discovered he’s Spider-Man (which, of course, has now been rendered moot thanks to the mindwipe/psychic blindspot). But hindsight is 20/20, after all.
And your last point is exactly why I have a problem with the ending of the story. Because, by letting the mugger go with the idea of capturing him later, Spidey risking the possibility that that same mugger could escape and commit some other crime in which other innocent people would get hurt, which is something that, as you point out, he wouldn’t really allow for given his sense of guilt and responsibility. And considering how quickly Spidey was able to web up the mugger in the epilogue, just how much time would it have taken for him for him to apprehend the mugger when Aunt May called? And as I said, there’s no repercussions for Spidey by letting the mugger temporarily go, so how could it have been a genuine moral dilemma? It doesn’t sink the issue down to a 1 or 0 for me since I felt there were several other things it had going for it (like Ryan Stegman’s art, for instance), but it’s certainly a strike against it.
I skipped this issue this week lol. Booster Gold is more important 😛
@stillanerd:
While I can sort of understand May’s feelings of abandonment, from the way it’s written it falls flat on it’s face. She throws all this at Peter now of all times, and not before. Not only that, but she says she excused it when he was a teenager. SO WHY EVEN BRING IT UP AT ALL?
It was just poor, and if the point of the issue was to be there for your loved ones, than it totally undercuts the point of Spider-Man and why he is who he is, and practically makes the whole dang title useless based off that fact. With all due respect I’m with Michael, this issue sucks.
Why would he even care about Betty? She’s a horrible person![/sarcasm]
I guess we should be glad they didn’t sneak any “Carlie Cooper is so cool” moments in there for good measure. Or did I miss something?
And to think they claimed May was so important that they put us through OMD/BND just to keep her around… and now she’s leaving. Sending her to hang out with Harry, huh?
ASM is dead to me. It’s not Spider-Man, it’s an alternate reality where nobody progresses and everyone’s a douchebag. Restore the real reality…oh wait, don’t bother, I wouldnt want MC2 Sullied with these hacks
I remember very vividly the night that I learned about several deaths happening in my family, one of those being my own father. Yes, other people were being hit hard, and yes, they needed support, but everyone deals with their grief separately. And everyone understand that everyone else is in pain. I spent a lot of time alone that evening before I turned to my friends for support. And May had Anna, who seems to me to have been her best friend. She should have been understanding of Peter, not resentful. And as Mike says, it’s not like she didn’t get plenty of emotional and financial support from Peter later.
I can understand why you would be upset about Aunt May’s characterization in this issue, Mike. However (and I’m reiterating what I’ve said about this on other forums) let’s not forget that, from Aunt May’s point-of-view with regards to the events of Amazing Fantasy #15, her husband was just murdered and the person she wanted support from, someone whom she regarded like her own son, took off without saying a word to anyone where he was going and was gone for the whole night. And I didn’t get the sense that she held a grudge towards Peter over this, because (as the image accompanying this article shows) had forgiven him because he was a teenager at the time having lost a father in Ben, too.
That being said, if there was any big misgiving I had about this issue, it was how it ended. The moment Aunt May calls Peter, he’s faced with a genuine moral dilemma: either stop the mugger from escaping justice for what he did to Betty and thus risk further disappointment and anger from his family and friends for not being there, or let him go and rush to the hospital to be by Betty’s side to provide emotional support. In the end, he chooses to go be with Betty, thus reinforcing the “moral” that it’s more responsible to be with the people we love when they need us than anything else.
Except in this case, Peter winds up doing virtually doing the same thing he did in Amazing Fantasy #15–he lets the criminal go. And conveniently, that same criminal doesn’t leave town despite being told that he needed to, nor does he commit any other crimes that would have potentially victimized more innocent people. Thus Spidey captures him the next night without having to feel guilty that someone else may have gotten hurt. Likewise, Betty, despite having serious head trauma and other injuries, makes a full recovery, just in time for Peter to keep their movie “date.” It makes for a nice happy ending, but at the expense of not having any real repercussions to Peter’s actions.
Wow… been ages since I’ve read any Spidey reviews. Good points, and though I hadn’t really considered picking this one up, you make me glad for that.