The end of the 616 Spider-Man as we know it. Universes shall collide and our last glimpse of the web headed wonder in a universe we’ve all known as love will be…COMPLETELY FORGETTABLE….and before you ask no Silk isn’t in this book at all but this issues variant cover is better than the rest of the book entirely. So way to go Cindy Moon you actually improved a Spider-Man book.
“The Graveyard Shift, Part Three: Trade Secrets”
“Repossession, Part Three: Nothing Left to Lose”
WRITERS: Dan Slott & Christos Gage
PENCILER: Humberto Ramos
INKER: Victor Olazaba
COLORS: Edgar Delgado
LETTERER: Chris Eliopoulos
COVER ARTISTS: Humberto Ramos & Edgar Delgado
ASSISTANT EDITOR: Devin Lewis
EDITOR: Nick Lowe
PLOT: Our story begins right with Ghost holding Sajani in his arms disrupting her heartbeat….because comics. Spider-Man tries to attack Ghost but he’s like a ghost so he uses his ghost powers to not get punched by Spider-Man but still hold onto Sajani…because comics. Spider-Man then webs Sajani out of the way after finding out that her and the guard from last issue are still alive. Ghost and Spider-Man fight while Anna Maria teams up with Clash, and an upgraded Living Brain who uses nanobots to improve his systems…because comics, in order to stop Ghost. They snatch a bunch of Peter’s Spider-Man gear adapting it specifically to fight off Ghost. Meanwhile Ghost is continuing to destroy Parker Industries, and Spider-Man can’t land a hit. Eventually a piece of rubble pins Spider-Man on the ground, and Ghost moves in to unmask our hero. HOW WILL HE GET OUT OF THIS ONE?, probably by outsmarting the villain, and lifting the rubble off like in the Master Planner Saga…..ooooooooor Anna Maria, The Living Brain (who could be defeated by a set of stairs), and the scientist formerly known as Clash could pop in and save him. So after Spider-Man does nothing, they all leave the building and watch Parker Industries burn to the ground. Everyone then comments about how this is the end for Parker Industries, and the book ends.
The other sideplot is Black Cat steals Aunt May’s precious dumb looking statue, and then kidnaps her. She brings Aunt May, and Jonah Sr. to join that unnamed blonde woman who are locked in some room with all of Black Cat’s old collectibles. Then she decides that now that her whole collection is there she will burn it down, and kill all the people who bought her goods in order to send a message….because comics. Spider-Man shows up, but they don’t fight or anything he just saves the people and The Black Cat escapes. Aunt May says she is 
sorry she ever doubted Spider-Man, and The Black Cat gives a speech to her henchman. THE END of the 616 universe Spider-Man as we know it.
STORY: So after months of Spider-Man getting a successful career, and building an enterprise, his operation is taken down completely by a bad Silver Age Iron Man villain. Legit this just completely negates anything interesting that came about from Slott’s new run, and leaves us with only the bad. What have Spider-Fan’s been unhappy about lately? Spider-Man doesn’t solve his own problems. CHECK. Black Cat is completely written out of character. CHECK. Spider-Man brooding over nothing. CHECK. Seriously this is like bad Spider-Man comic bingo, and Slott wrote up a full card.
Now I would go to the level of saying everything is bad about this issue, it does have some fun moments. I enjoy the artwork, and while part of a larger problem the scene where the Parker Industries gang saved Spider-Man was cute.
Now onto the ridiculous. If anyone thought that Ghost was too jokey in prior issue, this issue just blows his bad dialogue level to an 11. Every line is a bad, or clichéd joke. He doesn’t seem to really pose a threat seeing how he somehow murdered no one, and only wants to destroy a building because it’s a corporation. Is that even like a real motive? He is hired by a corporation to destroy another corporation. HEY GHOST YOU ARE ACTUALLY WORKING FOR A CORPORATION. The Living Brain now has full access to nanobots and decides to upgrade himself after being damaged? Thats a plot device so bad its recycled from the movie Jason X (the one where Jason goes to space). Sajani continues to not get punished for being awful, and only serves to nag. STILL…SHE IS STILL DOING THIS. IT HAS BEEN AN ENTIRE RUN AND THIS IS ALL THE CHARACTER HAS DONE. THAT’S IT…SPIDER-MAN WILL BE BACK WITH A NUMBER ONE AFTER SECRET WARS AND SHE HASN’T HAD A SINGLE REDEEMING CHARACTER MOMENT. WHY EVEN HAVE HER EXIST. 
argargargargargargarg. Oh and The Black Cat makes no sense. I mean she hasn’t made sense since post Superior but now she makes even less sense. Like randomly starting a fire to burn all of the stuff she used to own and the people who bought said stuff? This is supposed to send a message? Makes zero sense and doesn’t belong to the same character. Unless she unmasks herself and we discover that she was actually Baron Zemo this whole time irreparable damage has been done to the character.
Overall when we look back upon this 18 issue run of Spider-Man we probably won’t have many favourable things to say. There are been some pretty decent issues, but nearly all of them were point one’s. The rest ranged from really promising set up issues, to really big let down finale issues. Even the good points of say Spider-Verse are hindered by the lacklustre ending to the event. When Spider-Verse is your best aspect, and the best parts of the event are not even numbered Spider-Man issues we have a problem. Lets hope that Secret Wars will shake up with Spider-Man side of the Marvel Universe enough to get a new and interesting take on the character.
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@ 10 — I’m not sure there will be as much consensus on that. In other words, there seems to be plenty of readers out there that are enjoying / buying this stuff in Vol. 3. I’ve never seen anyone, conversely, cite the Vol. 2 relaunch as a good time for the character overall or as their favorite run.
But I just think Slott has been on the title TOO LONG. Much like Mackie and Michelinie before him, when their good ideas started to dry up after overlong stretches of writing the character.
@8 – Wow…so I guess it’s likely that, years from now, we’ll probably look at Slott’s possibly (hopefully) final run on Amazing as being on the same level as the Mackie/Bryne run. Man that’s sad.
You can even have Big Time/Superior as the good first half of his run, just like how Mackie’s started off well enough until the reboot, which is how I’ve seen it described by people who read that era.
mmmmmm-MMM!!!! Man, this is making Renew Your Vow look more and more appealing![/sarcasm]
When you think about the parallels between these two eras, it’s actually pretty startling:
– A pointless retelling of the origin to lead things off (Byrne’s Chapter One, Slott’s Learning to Crawl)
– An annoying female sidekick with similar powers who wants to bone Spidey (Mattie Franklin, Silk)
– Assassination of a longtime, loved female character (Mary Jane in the plane explosion, EVUUUL Black Cat)
– Spidey fights Ghost at his super science job.
It’s like Slott looked at Vol . 2 and said “screw it, I’ll just redo that era’s stories before Secret Wars. Because I only want to write Otto anyway and I’m being made to write Peter Parker”.
I’ve read less than a handful of issues of ASM Vol. 3, but it sounds about as bad as ASM Vol. 2 was.
Spider-man severely needs a creative shot in the arm after the last few years.
Is it mu impression or Slott is trying to prove that SpOck is better than Spider because the last can’t either solve his own problems?
@2
I really think that the entire 18 issue run was just stalling for time. Secret Wars was going to change things, but it wasn’t going to happen for another year, so they needed something to pass the time.
I kind of wonder if the reason we got something like Parker Industries was because everything was going to be changed anyway, so Slott was allowed to “go nuts” with the story and do whatever he wanted because it was going to be undone anyway. Kind of like what happened with Peter’s Other powers before OMD. It wasn’t like the series was going to stick with those changes, so they were pretty much doing whatever. I wouldn’t be surprised if the series we get after Renew Your Vows is radically different than what the series has been for the past year, and is more closer to a “classic” Spider-Man than the Tony Stark-esque Spidey we’ve had.
I would honestly be okay if they played the amnesia card on Felicia. I can’t think of any other way to wring her out of this mess (other than ignoring it entirely).
After reading your review, I would’ve thought you were giving it at least a D or an F. To give it a C is not only incredibly generous, it seems incongruous with the actual review you wrote!
“Overall when we look back upon this 18 issue run of Spider-Man we probably won’t have many favourable things to say.”
That’s an understatement! 😎