Spidey faces mind-controlled Avengers and races to halt Ock’s doomsday plot as Dan Slott wraps up his latest Spidey epic in a fashion that’s both suitably explosive and jarringly abrupt. It’s a strong finale that serves to throw into perspective just how disappointing this event as a whole was, because it leaves every dangling thread untied and every gaping hole unplugged.
The Amazing Spider-Man #687
Words by Dan Slott
Art by Stefano Caselli
Colors by Frank Martin Jr.
Letters by Joe Caramagna
This issue is like the final level of the video game, to use the analogy aptly brought forth on the Crawlspace podcast. It’s a sequence of boss fights. Fortunately, each of the three major confrontations is different and engaging enough to keep the pages turning readily.
686 left us with Spidey, Sable, Black Widow, and their surprising new recruit Mysterio facing off against six mind-controlled Avengers, a fight that I was looking forward to seeing play out. This issue doesn’t disappoint on that front. The battle is lengthy and well-executed; instead of trying to pretend that this outmatched team could really go toe to toe with the Avengers, Slott implied pretty heavily that they were actively working against Ock’s control to give Spidey and his allies an edge in the fight, which made sense. I particularly loved the scene where Sable goes hand to hand with Captain America. Caselli’s terrific when it comes to anatomy, facial expressions and perspective, and the scene really showcases his skills. The whole sequence is dampened a little by a slightly gimmicky final solution, but Iron Man’s “Freed by Mysterio? That is not going into the mission log” was amusing enough to make up for it.
A nice touch to the “boss battle” sequence is how allies disappear as it progresses, upping the drama. With Natasha knocked out and Mysterio pulling a vanishing act, it’s just Sable and Spidey who face the Rhino while proceeding through Ock’s fortress, and it leads up to an encounter which became my favorite part of the issue. Instead of resorting to more fisticuffs, Slott pulled a move that genuinely took me off guard by having Rhino simply hold Sable to the ground as the base begins to flood, promising that he won’t move an inch no matter what happens. It’s a ruthless way of challenging Spider-Man’s determination not to let anyone die on his watch, a theme which I thought was a little heavy-handed in past issues but worked out very well here — I really felt the pain as Peter was forced to accept Sable’s dying request that he leave her to drown and go after Ock. Of course the feeling doesn’t last long because her death is off panel in a comic book, so there’s not much chance of her staying dead, but it’s a touching scene nonetheless.
I was less blown away by the final confrontation with Octavius because it’s really nothing we haven’t seen before. Ock’s an egomaniacal nutjob, and the last-minute revelation of his true motivation for trying to scorch the whole planet is both believable and unremarkable. It’s written well, though, and is a suitable final confrontation of the arc.
Make up your mind, you lunatic.
And just like that, it’s over. Spidey gets picked up by Horizon’s mobile lab, he laments that he couldn’t save Sable, and there’s simply nothing else. I started getting a weird feeling as I finished the book, because I wanted to say, “Wow — I guess he just ran out of space or something,” but I couldn’t do that. This event contained more empty space than actual content. How could he run out?
The only conclusion I can come to about Ends of the Earth is that Slott was playing it by ear the whole way through, making everything up as he wrote it. The result is a complete mess. Many of the things I’ve harped on as being nonsensical over the course of this event were things I’d assumed or at least hoped were going to be explained or wrapped up at the end.
Jonah acting like an absurdly extreme version of himself the whole time, for example — I felt that was supposed to go somewhere. Issue 685 had an alternate cover that implied the Chameleon may have been acting in his place. Was that just supposed to mislead us, or was it just another one of those “let’s draw something completely irrelevant to the issue” variants like the symbiote-clad Mary Jane from a while ago?
And since that tied into the events around Horizon, I assumed it was all going to cohere somehow with the genius team’s involvement at the end of the event. But when the smoke clears, it turns out that all the Horizon crew did was have a boat for Spidey to clime aboard in the end. That’s it. All those asides we got in the past few issues where they were working on figuring out Ock’s stealth technology were utterly meaningless: it never happened, and it never mattered, because Spidey stopped Ock from hitting the “on” switch in the first place. Iron Man, Thor and Red Hulk launch themselves into the atmosphere to try to stop the satellites midway through the issue and we get a pointless aside updating us on their progress, only for the issue to then forget about them completely and their efforts to become irrelevant anyway. So why was it in the story?
This is why I have to imagine Slott just kind of wings these scripts and never goes back to revise when it turns out things don’t make sense. It’s as if he meant the whole time to have Horizon and Jonah (maybe the Chameleon as Jonah?) involved more, but then realized at the end he didn’t know what they were going to do and just switched gears.
Hurry! The entire structure is collapsing!
I enjoyed 687. Yet when I was finished with it, I still found myself annoyed, because I instantly started thinking about what this story could have been if it wasn’t bloated beyond comprehension. This is one of the very worst cases I’ve ever seen of decompression in modern comic book story telling.
Everything related to politics and global warming could have been cut out. Just call it a super bad heating device since it didn’t actually have anything to do with “global warming,” and skip the “summit” which did nothing to advance the plot and was only a vehicle for silly caricatures. Cut out every scene involving Jonah and Horizon labs, since they ended up doing absolutely nothing. Cut out the scenes with Aunt May and MJ; MJ’s scene could just as easily have been included in whatever upcoming issue actually explores that plot thread. Cut out the three day interim and the pointless obscure character cameos to sell a one-shot spinoff book nobody wanted or asked for. Cut out the crap about Spidey being hunted by SHIELD.
When you really start to think about it, the length of this whole arc is absolutely staggering considering how little actually happens in it. But wait — there’s more. Steve Wacker left us a punchline at the end of the book on the letters page.
“The debate rages pretty strongly,” he writes, referring to the debate over Spidey’s evolution — or lack thereof — as a character. “But there’s an old saying in comics,” he continues. I have to wonder how old this saying really is and how many people really say it, but you know what? Given the state of the comic book industry these days, I believe him. Steve’s old saying:
“Never give the reader what they think they want.”
Pros: A mostly tight, well-told final issue. Three solid battles with gorgeous art, good characterization, and I really liked Sable’s big moment.
Cons: A very abrupt ending that does nothing to tie up all the arc’s loose ends. Still some superfluous content that ends up being irrelevant by the end.
Grade: B+
Overall EotE grade: D
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Did anyone notice in one panel after the other Avengers are free, that they made a visual goof with the speech bubbles? The panel has spidey, sable, and thor on the left, with mysterio ironman and rulk on the right. When spidey and iron man talk, their speech bubbles are reversed, with spidey having iron man’s and vice versa. Once again, Dan Slott keeps proving how much he likes to make me angry. Also, why does he like kiling off characters like sable and Marla Madison? seriously, these guys r small potatoes compared to the others. The only character he’s killed off that mattered was hobgoblin, AND THAT WAS A TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE IDEA!!!
#@46
Because I still love the character, and want him to be handled better. I can’t explain it any better than that.
But you said above that you’re not reading the comic… unless I’m mistaken… but “IF” you aren’t reading ASM, then why do you care how Slott writes the book?
I’m not trying to be an ass… I just really want to know “why”?
… which, of course, would be rendered “moot” if you are indeed reading the book.
I just confused myself…lol
@#44
Did they take that “World’s Greatest Superhero” tagline off the covers yet?
And no one’s saying that he’s infallible… the problem is that Slott in the past has overdone this aspect to him… A LOT. which makes seeing it happen again all the more noticeable and infuriating.
I kinda feel a lot of the criticisms of this scene, and actually I think I’ve seen this crop up before in criticism of Slott’s ASM, seem to boil down to “… but he didn’t have to do that! If he’d had the minutes/hours of thinking time we readers have had, he could’ve found a better way!”
Well, yeah, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. These are decisions made under extreme duress, and Spidey is just a guy trying to do the best he can. He’s not meant to be as high on the infallible scale as Superman or Captain America. “Could I have somehow done better?” is a pretty major theme for the character, along with “I have ultimately won the big battle, but incurred smaller losses in the process”. Real people don’t always do the best they possibly could’ve done in any given moment, and I have no problem with Slott reflecting that. If all superhero stories followed strictly along the lines of the character’s stats in the Marvel handbook, there would be no need to hire proper writers.
@#35
Wait until you see me angry…
… and I really can’t be bothered… I just always felt like she had more than an interest in Spidey… similar to Jean DeWolffe… whose affections were only revealed after she gets killed by Stan Carter.
@33… I agree that the scene played out as such, but Spidey had no idea aside from the fact that they only had minutes to stop Ock… the last scene played itself out more for drama… in my opinion… but when he left Sable to go stop Ock, he only knew AT THAT TIME that he had a few precious minutes to save the world…
My main problem is that every writer seems to forget Spidey Super Strenght. He could have easily get behind rhino, lift him up, rescue sable and go on. Beside, everyone focus on sable but didn’t Spidey technically let TWO people die? Rhino’s supposed to be dead too…
Keep it civil everybody.
I can get behind Rhino being torqued up enough to do what he did (even though I really don’t care for the whole Oksana thing), but Spidey didn’t even try to stop him that I saw. I think he tried to pry his fingers loose in one panel. Maybe I’m forgetting something.
Ock’s master plan was garbage, too. I can write that off on the cancer though, I guess.
I can get behind Rhino being tor
Better talked to the reviewer who reviewed that book. I just copy pasted. I don’t WANT to read the comic. I have no interest in it.
And yet you have a problem with differences of opinion?
@ Enigma, take a chill pill, jesus christ.
@#33 It sounds like you didn’t read into the comic enough. They were on a lower floor which was flooded by the time Spidey stopped Ock. And my comment about Spidey becoming more violent is just my opinion. I thought the comment section was for that.
@#32
Can’t be bothered, or just can’t?
“And to everybody that feels that Spidey should have saved Sable… do you really thiunk he didn’t want to? THERE WAS NO TIME… had he even taken a minute… just ONE minute… it would have been over… Ock would have pressed the button and game over… everybody dies… except for the 0.008% of potential survivors… do you guys just forget that he had NO TIME? It was a pretty critical part of the story…
Sheesh…”
Yeah, I’m going with can’t. And you’d almost have a point, if not for something interesting. SPOILERS:
Meanwhile, Doc Ock is in his lab listening to Mozart’s “Requiem Mass” (since, as you know, all evil mad scientists are classical music lovers) as a furious Spidey breaks in. As Spidey and Doc Ock fight, Doc Ock reveals that his dying wish is to NOT kill Spider-Man, but to let him live to watch his greatest triumph. When Spidey points out that Doc Ock is destroying the world, Doc Ock states he never intended on killing everybody, as, according to his calculations, .008% of the world’s population–or 50,000 people–will survive, and that they will forever remember Doc Ock has the greatest mass murderer in history and thus his “legacy” will live on forever. He then pins Spidey in four of his robotic arms, and Spidey realizes that, being a megalomaniac, Doc Ock has to have a “doomsday button” only he can press to activate all the satellites. When Spidey points this out, however, Doc Ock leaves his robotic tentacle harness and crawls over to the controls. But just as Doc Ock is about to press the “doomsday button,” Spidey points out that everyone will still die if Doc Ock succeeds because the intense heat will give everyone else intense sunstroke to make them all brain damage and thus no one will remember Doc Ock. Ock panics, thinking that he couldn’t have possibly made an error, and this is enough time for Spidey to use all his spider-strength to free himself and destroy the controls with one of Doc Ock’s damaged tentacles. Doc Ock, resigned to defeat, attempts to commit suicide by submerging himself, but Spidey won’t allow it, and carried Doc Ock out of the lab.
That’s a lot of s*** to go down in just a minute, don’t you think? You make it sound like he’s watching the door with the button sitting in his lap! And like I said, he tries to save everybody. That’s just who he is, and how he’s been written in the past. So the fact that he SAVES Doc Ock, and doesn’t even TRY to save Rhino and Sable just smacks of poor writing. Sure it leads to the “emotional” realization at the end, but it’s still awkward. Cripes…
Although I do agree with one thing. The way he beats Ock is pretty clever.
I’ve been reading ASM monthly since 1978, and even though I can’t pinpoint the “specific” issues, because I really can’t be bothered to disprove E-2099’s calling it BS, but I always felt like there were hidden yet romantic feelings towards Spider-Man by Silver Sable, so when Slott brought these up… I felt he was just playing with feelings that have been there but never really explored…
And to everybody that feels that Spidey should have saved Sable… do you really thiunk he didn’t want to? THERE WAS NO TIME… had he even taken a minute… just ONE minute… it would have been over… Ock would have pressed the button and game over… everybody dies… except for the 0.008% of potential survivors… do you guys just forget that he had NO TIME? It was a pretty critical part of the story…
Sheesh…
@#29
Before or after this OMD/BND crap? Cause I sure didn’t see a lot of it.
@#27
Your logic is flawed. You’re applying rules to him that don’t apply to others? And am I understanding you correctly? Are you saying that Spider-man’s the only superhero that doesn’t gain experience and wisdom when he gets older? He just gets sloppier? You know if this is the case, you should write Marvel and tell them to take that “world’s greatest hero” slogan off his books. Since by your logic, he’s only getting worse.
“Slott also realizes that, while fighting a crueler, more bloodthirsty Sinister Six, someone is bound to get hurt.”
Or it’s just another excuse to kill someone during his stint on the book…
“And it make perfect sense for Spidey to save the world instead of Sable.”
… because it’s his book.
“Its all logic, Spidey can attempt to save Sable and let the world burn, killing almost everybody. Or he can save the world letting everybody live, except Sable. You guys are still shakey about this because Spiderman has never had such a big choice. He has never had the weight of the world on his shoulders.”
We’ve had an issue where Spider-Man has tried to save EVERYBODY… including the people trying to KILL HIM while he’s trying to save everybody(Massacre). Even if he’s unable to, he would try. Look at all the times he has in the past. The fact that he doesn’t try to do ANYTHING to save both Sable AND Rhino is silly. Especially when there are probably ways for him to do it.
From the Marvel Database:
Rhino’s weight: 710 lbs.
From the MARVEL DATABASE:
Peter can cling to most surfaces, has superhuman strength (able to lift 10 tons optimally) and is roughly 15 times more agile than a regular human.
He could have lifted them BOTH without effort with a webline, or his bare hands.
http://www.samruby.com/SpectacularB/spectacular_spiderman_190.htm
And this book. Thisis the most d****** evidence. He didn’t just beat the Rhion. He WHOOPED him. So the fact that he HAD to leave Sable to “die” is just dumb. And illogical.
Nevermind the fact that he could have just grabbed her and jumped OVER the big lug, thereby avoiding the confrontation altogether. See? There were other, more logical ways for this to play out than what happened…
Spidey has always been written as having a lot of beautiful women attracted to him. Which makes sense. He’s got a great physique, and is brilliant and highly capable. Those are generally considered pretty attractive qualities.
@#24
You’re wrong. And now I shall attempt to point out how.
Realism? Slott brings the funny, and tends to overdo it a lot sometimes. See Ends of the Earth prologue/portrayal of several of the supporting cast, who behave irrationally or unlike they’ve usually been written…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_Can_Stop_the_Juggernaut!
He’s not the first person to pit him against the Juggernaut, you know. Hell, even Rob Liefeld did it… and drew it poorly too.
Poor characterization. I’m not gonna restart the whole Spidey’s cool with torture (not torcher) debate, but just reiterate that I was kinda WTF. Let’s think about this now. Sandman hates Spider-man for costing him his daughter. But he just trusts Doc Ock unconditionally. The man who has lied to his face before. See Return of the Sinister Six and such. And Keemia wasn’t even his!!!
For the 60’s comment, see Amazing Spider-Man Classics… they didn’t let those comics get away with it either. So this is kind of an empty rebuttal.
Sable’s feelings? It was STILL complete BULL***. Completely out of the blue, no buildup whatsoever, and utterly pointless. Spider-man goes on guilt trips over deaths he wasn’t even responsible for. Why wouldn’t he feel bad about Sable potentially dying unless she was horned up for him? Just another “we don’t want him with Mary Jane. How about we pair him with someone else?” SLAP TO THE FACE. And how weird is it that after his marriage goes through the unholy annulment, suddenly every female in the MU is thinking in the back of their mind that they want to break off a piece of the Spider? Think about it like that and then try to tell me it makes sense…
@#25&26. Yeah, Peter’s 25 or so. Technically, in the real world he’s gone through 50 years. But, he’s 25 and beat 1,400 villians. Which means he fights at least 56 villians a year. Plus, he has ten dramatic events a year. This can mess a person up psychologically. Having a loved one fall off a bridge would drive any of us crazy. Over a ten-year-thousand-battle-span, he has become more violent and sloppy. It is reality. An policeman who has been working for ten years will be more sloppy that a younger one. Plus, Peter’s young. Tony Stark and Cap can handle it because they are older and smarter. Slott also realizes that, while fighting a crueler, more bloodthirsty Sinister Six, someone is bound to get hurt. And it make perfect sense for Spidey to save the world instead of Sable. Its all logic, Spidey can attempt to save Sable and let the world burn, killing almost everybody. Or he can save the world letting everybody live, except Sable. You guys are still shakey about this because Spiderman has never had such a big choice. He has never had the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Peter is supposed to be in his mid-20’s, how can he go through 50 years of torture?
# 24
How exactly do Slott bring reality into comics. This is not a jab, just don’t see it and would like to know what you mean with it.
You know, I like how Dan Slott is realizing that, after fifty years of torcher, Spidey is kind of going mad. This is probably all leading up to ASM 700, like it or not. Anyways, Sable’s death is one of my favorite parts in the arc, adding emotion to the fighting. Slott’s storytelling has NOT been getting sloppy. He is just bringing reality into the comics. It does make me kind of sad how everybody on this site picks on a good writer like Dan Slott. If anything we should be concentrating on the BAD storis like The Clone Saga or OMD Those two deserve D’s and F’s. You can’t compare EotE to any of those arcs. Slott isgiving us more than the regular villian who’s bent on robbing banks andkilling Spiderman. He is giving us truely interesting stories.
@#22 He beat Juggs, but it took him a long time, which he didn’t have, and was recently beaten by him in AvX.
@#12 If Sable didn’t pour acid on Sandman, he couldn’t have been help because he would turn to mud.
@#20 60’s stories weren’t flawless either. Peter was called Peter PALMER in his first solo issue, which haunts me and he randomly beats up the FF just for their attention.
@#14 That whole romance thing was to help us feel bad about Sable’s death.
The rhino didn’t bother me too much. If the death of someone close to you can transform Peter parker into a super hero then whose to say the opposite isn’t true. I kind of like it when spidey’s villians mirror himself in some way. Even the new hobgoblin, which I know many aren’t big on, has a nice sadistic twist on the great power principle. Er but back to the Rhino. Going after Sable because he new it would bug spidey was a clever move for the big oaf. And Sable, being a soldier promptly set peter’s priorities straight when he went to help… It all sounds good… but somehow feels so hollow. As much I like the over all direction and plot contrivances in some cases, I have a real hard time getting invested in Slott’s writting. But I’m an optimist, hopefully a nice epilogue to wrap things up will help. There’s been a couple instances where I’ve been able to appreciate what Slott can do in a casual setting, so I’m looking forward to that at least.
@ #17 Yes, Rhino has been written differently since The Gauntlet (which annoys the hell out of me, by the way), but at the end of the day, he’s still Rhino. Spider-Man stopped the Juggernaut, beat the X-Men all by himself and KO’d Firelord, so you’d think he could at least do something to get Rhino to release his grip on Silver Sable. But no, not Nu-Spidey. Rhino’s too tough for him.
I would have loved to have seen Venom and Anti-SS suit Spidey together. Does that mean it should have been Venom “torturing” Sandman?
I’ve yet to read a Dan Slott 7 part Spidey story… nonetheless, I gave EoTE a B+… I liked it… except the art was not up to snuff on some parts… and to the guy that stated the late 60’s/early 70’s Spider-Man never made mistakes… you need to read those books again. Spider-Man has always been about a guy making choices, always morally right, but not without consequences… christ, he made the biggest bad choice of his life in his first appearance… and how’za bout all those times he let Norman Osborn get away with being the “bad guy” because he was his best friend’s Dad… and all those times he let Venom go free…
To the Moral Majority that seem to think that “their” Peter Parker would never make such dasdardly wrong decisions have obviously never read a Spider-Man book…
I can’t help but agree here, this book was a pretty big let down. Even with my low expectations for Spidey lately. And I’m getting pretty tired of seeing Dan Slott’s sloppy storytelling every month. Is anyone else getting tired of these bloated 6 – 7 issue arcs that really don’t go anywhere?
Wow, a lot of interesting comments here. I usually don’t like to get involved too much in discussion following the review, but I just want to mention this time that I think that the torture controversy is a VERY different issue from this incident with the Rhino. To me, this was a very good scene that was entirely in keeping with the spirit of Spider-Man, and it may be that it was an oversight on my part not to go into a bit more detail about why that is in the review, so if you’ll indulge me in a slight update…
The reason I like this scene is because it acknowledges that even though he is determined to, and would like to, Spider-Man can’t actually save everyone all of the time. I don’t think that this is a slight on his character at all, rather it’s being a bit realistic. If this were a situation without a lot of pressure and a time limit, I agree, Spidey would have found a way to get Sable out of there and beaten the Rhino, as he has done dozens of times in the past. But the whole point of the scene was that the heroes were racing to stop Ock from activating his super bad heating device. Spidey was forced to make a choice that had no good solution. If he stayed and found a way to get Sable out of her predicament, he was risking the life of every single person on earth.
Most of the time, Spider-Man will save everyone. But there have been times when he has failed to in the past, and there should be more times in the future, because despite being the world’s greatest super hero he is still limited and human, and that’s part of his appeal.
@ 15, since Rhino’s comeback in the Gauntlet he’s been depicted pretty much as an unstoppable force of nature since losing his wife
I too do not think Spider-man would have left Sable or would have gone the torture angle on Sandman. Perhaps that’s just Peter evolving? Evolving into a character I don’t like, perhaps, but people do change over time. As a kid (late 60s, early 70s), I had Peter Parker as a role model, he would always make the correct decision, he was always a good moral compass. I don’t know that I would choose him now for that role for my kids (ages 7 and 9).
Drunk, Sex, Torture, Idiot (in Ultimate cartoon show), Etc. I hate having to question if I want my kids exposed to this stuff. I know moral and wholesome is boring but I say you could put the spice into the stories through other characters and still leave Peter the straight laced tight-ass that always does the “right” thing.
Anyway, great review. Many valid points about how the story developed. One thing to keep in mind: Dan Slott frequently reminds us about how things are building up to a glorious, spectacular happening for issue #700. Is it possible some of these “unneeded” side scenes are building blocks for that event?
Later,
Kent
Spider-Man had no trouble beating the hell out of Rhino in Spectacular Spider-Man #190. He even threw him around a little in the issue. But here, due to it being convenient for the plot, Slott has Spidey leave Silver Sable to die because Rhino is suddenly “too strong” and “near immovable.” Bullshit! I hate this book.
@13 now that you mention it… she even calls Peter Spider, which is usually Black Cat’s nickname for him… and the sudden romantic interest developped by Silver Sable… I think you just scored there.
Wasn’t the story originally supposed to have Black Cat and Venom? So then… would it have been Black Cat who gets “drowned” by Rhino? I’ll be really disappointed if they just bring them both back.
Great review. What bothered me the most is that sable mentionned Sandman and the fact they could have TALKED HIM into helping them using his daughter instead of just torturing him. Which, as far as I’m concern really does prove your point that slott wrote this as it went and had to find a way to justify why sandman wouldn’t help protecting his daughter.
I agree with Eddie. I just don’t buy Spidey leaving Sable to die. That moment should have been a really bad time to be The Rhino.
I hope he really is dead though. I liked him better when he was a dumb thug.
“The battle is lengthy and well-executed; instead of trying to pretend that this outmatched team could really go toe to toe with the Avengers, Slott implied pretty heavily that they were actively working against Ock’s control to give Spidey and his allies an edge in the fight, which made sense.”
That makes the whole Sable/Spidey/Black Widow vs the New Avengers much easier to take.
So, does anyone think the story lived up to the hype? And does it make you interested in knowing who is Alpha?
@#8 I dunno. HALF of the cusomers from my comic store is buying the story.
Is there any sources showing the sales of the book in comparison to Ultimate Spider-Man?
I think a “D” is harsh. I enjoyed this arc. I would give it a “B-“.
I think you were a little too generous with the grade for this issue, but overall, I agreed with your review. Most especially, I came away with exactly the same feeling – Slott just made this up as he went a long. And yes, the final panel is as anticlimactic as it gets. Also, I’m just not sure that Spidey would have left Sable to die. I think he would have found a way to beat the Rhino. Yes, Rhino’s stronger, but not THAT much stronger. This whole thing was just hollow. I don’t know how much more of this I can take before I just give up on it.
To clarify: I don’t review or even read Avenging Spider-Man, so for the purpose of my reviews (and for me) the arc is over.
I will probably end up reading Aaron’s review to get the gist of what happens. There is a point where I put my foot down, and releasing a 7-issue arc that’s over 50% fluff and then expecting me to buy an extra book to cover up sloppy writing is that point.
Is it a bit too early to give out a grade for this arc, considering the epilogue? I’m not saying it doesn’t deserve it, but still. I was also hoping to see a review for the one-shot, unnecessary though that issue may be.
“Never give the reader what they think they want.”
Well i have to handed to Wacker this time, that phase actually is true, just look at the sales of the book to see it:)
*Copies and pastes for own review*
Nice review, the epilogue by Slott and Templeton next week in Avenging SM#8 will tie up all of the loose ends btw.