The Amazing Spider-Man #678 Review

 A world without Spider-Man is no world at all! Spidey has scant hours to figure out what causes the future destruction of the city, and what role he plays in it!

“I Killed Tomorrow Part 1: Schrodinger’s Cat”

Written by Dan Slott

Illustrated by Humberto Ramos

Inked by Victor Olazaba

Colored by Edgar Delgado

Lettered by VC’s Joe Caramagna

THE PLOT: Peter is shown by his co-worker Grady Scraps a new invention which is a doorway that looks into the future by 24 hours. Once Peter goes through it, they find that the city is horribly devastated. Peter figures that his absences as Spider-Man must have caused the destruction, and vows to do everything that he was meant to in order to save the city.

LONG STORY SHORT: Spidey runs through the day, saving every person he’s supposed to according to a possible future’s newspaper. Unbeknownst to him, a costumed villain called Flag Smasher plans to blow up the Smyrkarian Pride Parade held by Mayor Jameson.

MY THOUGHTS: After the crud that was the last two weeks of Spidey stories, this was a breath of fresh air that put me in a good mood. It may be because Waid’s two-parter with Daredevil and the Black Cat was so bad that I was desperately seeking some release, but I honestly enjoyed this little story. To me, it shows how much Dan Slott does love the character of Spider-Man to have this sort of nice, light super hero affair and make it enjoyable without coming off as totally cheesy or typical. There’s nothing screamingly special about it, but there’s an aspect of that which adds to its charm.

There are two things that almost bug me about this issue. One is the exposition, which goes into nearly parodying at the beginning. “I’m Peter Parker. I’m also a scientist, F4 member, Avenger, Spider-Man and I love in New York. I work at Horizon Labs…” yadda yadda yadda. Frankly it was harmless and could be seen as Slott attempt to bridge any new readers into the series, which is commendable. I just find it funny.

More on the negative side, I find it really stretching credibility that this Grady Scrap guy can just poof out an inter-dimensional doorway into the future by himself without anyone’s knowledge. It’s one thing to have super scientists in a comic book, but this is like Dexter’s Lab territory here. “Oh Peter, look at this thing I made over the weekend.” This is as close to Reed Richards-level intelligence that I’ve ever seen a non-super powered character get to. Again, it didn’t ruin the issue for me, but it did take me out of the story and was hard to buy.

There’s not much else to describe, but I liked pretty much everything else that occurred. I liked Ramos’ art, as the events weren’t super crazy like in the Sin. Six issue which made his art a bit easier to take in. (Again, I am a fan of Ramos, mainly when he draws more grounded work like this.) I like his Peter Parker, as he comes off strong and powerful without being bulky. His confident body language coincides with the beginning thought captions in that both are extreme 180 turnovers from the last issue where Peter was close to tears over his breakup with Carlie. Here I picture him singing U2’s “Beautiful Day” while walking down the street. I’m not blaming Slott at all for the shift, as it’s consistent with how Peter’s been acting lately.

There were some gags in here that I found genuinely amusing. I kind of liked Madam Web’s appearance although it did come off almost too much like a sight gag for her to be dressed as a stay-at-home-mom. I laughed out loud at the F.A.C.A.D.E. gag, which unlike most of Slott’s continuity references felt like a fun throwaway bit and not him bragging. Jonah’s one line in the story was fun too, promoting a

 pride parade while trying to invite tourist money as well.

Finally, the scene with Max Modell apparently outing himself to the readers of ASM flew by me initially. Like Josh, I too assumed he was referring to an old business colleague when talking about his partner, but when re-reading it, you can definitely see what is meant by the dialogue. Slott has said as much, and I applaud him for writing it in such a non-grandiose way. It’s very matter-of-factly, and that’s how it should be. Sexual orientation in comics shouldn’t be a press conference, it should be an aspect of a character. Well done Mr. Slott.

Overall this issue made me smile, and coming off of Waid’s two-parter it put me in a happy place when thinking about Spider-Man. I had fun with this.

4/5 webs