The Amazing Spider-Man #685 Review

 Spider-Man and his remaining allies in the fight against Doc Ock and the Sinister Six begin to make headway one Octo-Base at a time. But is it enough? And is Ock really planning on saving the world? Find out here!

Ends of the Earth Part Four: GLOBAL MENACE

Written by Dan Slott

Illustrated by Humberto Ramos

Colored by Victor Olazaba

Inked by Edgar Delgado

Lettered by VC’s Joe Caramagna

THE PLOT: Spidey, Sable and Widow have for the past three days attacked Doctor Octopus’ missile sites around the planet. After a battle with the Rhino in which they’re made clear that Ock had them branded terrorists, Spidey makes a call out to all of the remaining heroes on the planet for help.

LONG STORY SHORT: The three superheroes track the source of Ock’s missile sites to Romania, only to find the place abandoned. Ock unleashes the full force of his global satellites, frying the planet!

MY THOUGHTS: *Sigh*…

Alright look, I’m sorry. I really am. I don’t mean to come off as constantly berating this story because it has its fans. I will acknowledge every positive aspect present in the issue. With that being said, this again was another installment of EOTE that I’m not too hot on. In fact Ends of the Earth as a whole has become a disappointment. I didn’t have high hopes going into the story, but I still expected it to be fun and in some ways it has been. Still, this story feels artificial and inconsequential. The threat I feel isn’t really apparent, all of the characters talk about their actions and feelings and describe them for the sake of the reader taking their word on it, and everything comes out feeling hollow and not that memorable or important.

Again, it’s not a horrible issue. I say that all the time, it’s not awful…but it’s not good either. The problem lies with the brevity of the scenes and the lack of emotion they convey. This issue begins with a time skip of three days, which in my opinion kills much of the tension the situation offers. With so many of the earth’s super heroes out of commission, there should be a sense of desperation that we should see Spidey go through and feel ourselves. To learn that he, the Widow and Silver Sable have been hacking away at missile sites like levels in a video game tells us that we’ve missed nothing. We the reading audience should be invested enough to want to know about every second that Spider-Man goes through in fighting this global danger. A brief page of flashback panels would have been a better choice, but as it stands now, everything is moving too quickly.

The three day time skip also presents a problem with the whole fugitive angle. How is Spider-Man and his two allies branded terrorists of the world and they don’t learn of it? Black Widow says that it explains why no one has come to help them, wouldn’t they have asked for help before now? I imagine if they did, they would then learn of their public enemy status. It just doesn’t make any sense that the entire planet’s security and peace keeping forces are looking for them, and they wouldn’t know about it. On top of that, the world terrorist angle is stupid anyway. Spider-Man and the Black Widow are Avengers, and the Avengers are missing. Both have saved the world countless times, and the Marvel Universe public at large knows it. With this story aspect, we are being asked to buy that all 7 billion people on the planet are so sheepishly naive and gullible to not only believe that Doctor Octopus is genuine, but that Spider-Man is evil, when there’s been 685 issues and nearly 50 years of history that speaks otherwise. The page where people around the world all assert Doc Ock’s good will is almost insulting. This has to be a debatable issue for the citizens of the world, and there must be no common consensus. I can roll with public officials signing off on Ock’s schemes, but for everyone to wholesale lap up what he’s been feeding them hook line and sinker is essentially saying that the people of the world are brain-dead half-wits who deserve whatever calamity Ock plans to thrust upon them. It’s too unbelievable.

Similarly, Max Modell and his team of hipsters are behind Spider-Man 100%…why? Didn’t Modell refute Spider-Man in the .1 Morbius issue? I’m not saying he should be totally against him, but that issue was to set up the following stories to come and the scene of Modell yelling at Spider-Man near the end was meant to establish the new status quo between the two. I’m just asking for some continuity recognition and consistency.

Again this story relies on character complacency for the plot to move forward. Doctor Octopus can just convince the villains of the world to work for him and defend his satellite stations from Spider-Man. Spider-Man, in one page, can just convince the remaining D-List heroes of the Marvel U to fight on his side with no evidence that he’s in the right. The scene is meant to show Spider-Man as a grown hero and leader by having him summon whatever hero he needs to with the sound of his voice, but it isn’t convincing. We’re shown the heroes that will be in the EOTE special, but we don’t see exactly how they react to his call or what their personal feeling on Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus are. He just talks and they obey, and we’re supposed to take that on its face that he was being a Captain America-esque type of hero.

 What follows next is interesting, however. We get some mad Spidey/Silver Sable shipping in a scene where she’s clearly trying to convey some long-carried romantic feelings for him. In all of my experience with Spidey and Sable, this doesn’t really feel right. I’m not going to say it’s out-and-out impossible, but what the heck brought this on? With Sable’s jealous look on her face once Spidey references Mary Jane, we do get a nice transition to MJ’s perspective on the streets of New York. It’s a nice scene, reminiscent of the 90s where MJ had a lot of panel-time to have inner monologues about Peter. It’s out of synch with the first half of the issue because she describes everyone on the street to be anxious and worried over what Doc Ock would do. Again we have to take it on her word that this is true because we don’t actually see this. It’s believable, but right after establishing the opposite at the beginning of the issue, it doesn’t  match up. Still, for what it was, it served as a definite highlight of the issue.

The ending was good too, if only for the fact that it’s totally a Doc Ock thing to spite the world even when he’s winning. Describing himself as a creature of hate felt right, even considering all of the times he’s been slightly noble throughout the years. Ock is too messed up to really be saved IMO.

The art by Ramos was decent, although the first half did have panels where I couldn’t tell what was happening. The fight with the Rhino was a bit frenzied, and I couldn’t make out what Spider-Man did to him. The middle of the issue looked nice, as Ramos could slow down and really concentrate on the models of the characters. The ending was more of the beginning with the frying of Romania.

Overall though, this was more of the same. Ends of the Earth as a high-octane adventure story feels lackluster, and even when it has chances to go for gravitas, it comes up short because we’re not given enough reason to go on what the characters are saying.

2/5 webs