The roller coaster that is Renew Your Vows is gearing up to its biggest thrill, but does it have enough steam to reach the top?

WRITER: Dan Slott
ARTIST: Adam Kubert & Scott Hanna
COLORIST: Justin Ponsor
LETTERER: VC’s Joe Caramagna
COVER ARTISTS: Adam Kubert and Justin Ponsor
ASSISTANT EDITOR: Devin Lewis
EDITOR: Nick Lowe

PLOT: We start off getting to see a little more of Annie’s back story. We see how she has had to constantly hide her powers from her parents at every turn. Even when she feels justified she has been denied the use of her powers, but not this time her dads in trouble and she’s going to…get kidnapped. We see Mary Jane and Annie get teleported into Shields secret base. Here we get a better view of who is behind the brand new SHIELD as Hawkeye introduces himself as the new head. We also see how they are managing to travel. The Spot former Spider-Man villain has had his powers tampered with by Regent and now whenever he uses one of his portals for transportation part of his body disappears. Jarvis takes Annie whilst Mary Jane has a talk with Hawkeye about their plans to save Peter. Hawkeye has given up hope for Peter and just assumes he has died. Meanwhile back with our beloved Web-Head we see him finishing off the Sinister Six only to see Sandman appear in an attempt to get Spider-Man to come away with him. Unfortunately for the two of them Regent makes an appearance easily capturing the both of them and taking them to his lair. While at Regents lair we see D-Man getting a full autopsy leading Peter to regret his actions from last issue. Regent then uses his psychic abilities to interrogate Sandman and discover the location of the secret rebel base (yes this scene is clearly from the first Star Wars movie). Back with Shield we see Annie get reunited with the Power Pack and create her own costume. Hawkeye examines Annie’s inhibitor bracelet and realizes that the tech can be used to separate Regent from his powers, the only thing they need? A drop of Regents blood. Before they can formulate a plan however Regents goons charge in and attempt to eliminate the Rebels once and for all. Using the last of his power The Spot creates a portal to evacuate everyone, while Annie leaps into action easily dispatching The Shocker, Boomerang, and Kraven. In Regents base Spider-Man gets to find out more of Regents plan which is to kill DOOM and take over Battleworld. He puts Peter into stasis and walks away. As he walks away Sandman reveals he has a secret portal inside him (put there by the Spot) and allows the resistance to get right into the heart of Regents base. Using his powers Sandman explains that Regent has Spider-Man which causes Mary Jane and Annie to leap through the portal and save Peter. 

STORY: This issue has a lot to love about it. Solid story, Mary Jane feels like a great character, and Annie has some really fun fight scenes. However before I praise there are some substantial continuity oddities that I feel need to be mentioned.

Sandman appears to Peter they have an argument, and Sandman explains that he has powers so he wouldn’t want to be with Regent. Which all makes perfect sense, all the other Sinister Six members has Tech based abilities…all except one The Rhino. Now in Amazing Spider-Man 2 the movie the Rhino clearly has a suit that gives him his enhanced abilities, but asides from the film Rhino has always been naturally superhuman. The suit acts armour but it was always my understanding that it was biological and not suit based. So naturally Regent would most likely utilize his strength as well. In this issue we also get introduced to Hawkeye who lost an eye from the Regent fight first issue. Contrary to how it seemed in the first issue. Hawkeye and his group all of whom survive are seen dealing with a breakout at Rykers and then being called in to rescue. You don’t see any of those characters in the Regent massacre, so it was under my assumption they survived because they couldn’t make it to the fight scene. This isn’t really a criticism because fine I guess they could have been there but it seems suspect. More importantly why wouldn’t Sandman’s powers be useful to Regent? IT’s a huuuuge miscalculation to ignore the clear superiority of Sandman’s abilities. He is a villain that could conceivably take on the Avengers himself. Lastly the use of the word “GOD” by Regent. In the world of Secret Wars there is no such word as “GOD” when Doom completely reformed the world he replaced the word “GOD” with “DOOM” read any other Secret Wars book, and even characters who’ve never encountered Doctor Doom will still say “Oh my DOOM”.

Now that my continuity nitpicks are done there are some really cool elements of the plot. I loved that Jarvis was still alive, I really liked the introduction of The Spot being used as a good guy, and I love that Regent will conceivably get taken out by Peter Parker’s invention. The story was fun, and the characters felt like they were progressing well. Annie’s dialogue continues to sound like that of a child, and her opening monologue really fits the kind of struggle she would be having within this universe. This is the kind of writing we all like to see from our storytellers.

ART: Overall the art continues to be solid, and immensely enjoyable there are two artists credited upon this issue but I find it hard to tell where one ends and the other begins so the style stays relatively the same. That being said the art in this issue is much more akin to the art last issue where its still great, but there’s not as much playing around with perspective and style which really made the original issues stand out.

B