32 Comments

1. #28 – I meant to say, I should have made a sincere apology to you and #19. Sometimes I go off on sarcasm and hyperbole without paying attention to my tone and force of my words. I’ll try to do better.

2. #30

   I’m guessing the Silver Surfer nominations have everything to do with Michael and Laura Allred and their spectacular art (plus Michael Allred is no slouch when it comes to plotting and writing a well told, fun comic – I loved Madman – and since Slott works Marvel style, there’s lots of room for Allred to influence the storytelling) and little to do with Slott. Slott was not nominated in the writing category, but Michael Allred got an additional nomination in the penciller category and Laura Allred got an additional nomination in the colorist category.

3. Slott is up for an Eisner. Two Eisners at that, fortunately, it’s not for the drivel he produces for Marvel’s flagship hero, but for his work on Doctor Wh…I mean Silver Surfer, which is’nt all that bad

4. #27

   Sorry. Blame it on being a nitwitpicker, as #19 was so kind to point out.

5. (Obviously that last post was meant to start with @25. Ah well.)

6. @24 Wow. Hard to see how anyone could read a thinly veiled personal insult into “It’s cool that you like the issue BUT ONLY A BRAINDEAD MORON COULD EVER LIKE SUCH A WRETCHED PIECE OF TURD but to each their own.”

   Seriously, can’t believe the other poster sounded a little defensive and insulted when your post was so tolerant and open to differing opinions and the possibility of others enjoying something you didn’t.

7. @25 – So what you’re saying is, after 8 years of being kicked in the stomach every month, this month we’ve been slapped in the face instead and it doesn’t hurt as much?

8. #24:

   Again, it’s cool you like the issues.

   But from where I sit, only someone whose literary wit stopped developing somewhere around “See Dick and Jane. Run Spot Run” can truly enjoy Slott’s hackneyed, hamfisted and completely lacking in anything resembling storycraft issues. From a creative writing point of view, Slott gets an F-. There’s mindless fun entertainment, and then there’s mind-numbing entertainment that requires the consumer to turn off their brain completely. Slott is the latter.

   It’s…telling, IMO…that people are praising this issue simply because it sucks less. We’ve been beaten down by the volcano of &#@% over the last eight years. What I’m taking away about the response to this issue is since it isn’t the usual three month-old moldy pizza, but merely week-old stale pizza, it’s okay.

   But take away the comparison, and week-old stale pizza is still pretty nasty.

   Anyway, to each their own.

9. Fiendly Reminder: ouch, that hurt. I’m crying.

   FYI I’m not some pro-slott fanboy. I hated ASM vol. 3(written by slott) where spider man was constantly getting shafted in favor of silk or clayton cole. On the other hand most of ASM vol. 4 issues are enjoyable so far, which made me pick up the book again. The recent ASM issues are nowhere near as bad as the ASM vol. 3 issues so that’s why I made that ‘nitwitpicker’ comment. Peter, for once, is sucessful in his life so I for one want the Parker Indrustries to stay. And he should also keep those new webbings too.

   Of course, I hated OMD (also hated most of BND era comics because of michelle gonzalise, carlie cooper, mayor jameson, aunt may having xxx with jameson sr) and want MJ to get together with Peter again but I don’t think quesada would let it happen.

10. #19, I know you didn’t mean any offence, but it’s still rather telling pro-Slott fanboys always tend to insult people when defending how easily pleased they are by this thing. Just call us nitpickers (or people with actual critical faculties), also this “it’s fun, it’s fine” mentality is why I really hate the MCU movies as they spend more time being quipmaster central than an engaging and interesting story.

11. #19 Hey, if you like it, that’s all that matters.

    But there are Spider-Man comics – written by J.M. DeMatteis, Gerry Conway, JMS, Peter David, Brian Michael Bendis, Robbie Thompson, to name a few – that tell a fun story but don’t actively insult the readers’ intelligence and cause readers to lose IQ points through exposure. Slott’s storytelling is DUMB, and gets dumber every issue. So far, this story is nothing but eye-rolling ridiculous action gags – the underwater Pisces base, the Goblin fight in Africa, the fight in the British Museum, the space jump and now this ridiculous and unnecessary fight on a train. The amount of story actually being told is very, very little to the point where Slott makes a Michael Bay or Zack Snyder film seem like examples of erudite, tight storytelling by comparison. I guess you could call Slott’s stories “fun,” but they are also very, very silly and the slightest poke causes them to fall apart like toilet paper in a monsoon.

    I love fun. But it’s possible to have fun AND tell a compelling, well-crafted story. Stan Lee’s Silver Age Spider-Man stories have more consistent world building, characterization and plot logic in three pages than Slott’s entire Volume 4 so far. Heck, even the daily comic strip does a better job keeping Peter Parker and his world consistent.

    But to each their own. If you enjoy it, that’s honestly great.

12. @#17&18 – So, how do you really feel? 🙂 I agree with all of your statements, but they just didn’t bother me. Sure, Spider-Man and cling onto a plane or a space capsule, but has a hard time on a train. It’s a problem we find in all comics, but someone as steeped in continuity as Slott is expected to uphold it. I’ve never ridden on the Eurostar (I did visit England and France if you count Disney World Epcot Center – waked around the world in one day and still had time to sit and enjoy fireworks), so I do not know near as much about it as you do. When I said he did his homework, I just meant he at least Googled it. When you Google the speed of the Chunnel, you get 186 mph. That’s more than I can say for the satellite research that went into the previous issue. But when it comes down to it, when I read the comic, it just felt like a Spider-Man comic. His back up was acting like supporting cast, not like the main characters saving the day. The jokes were funny (imo), and he had to use just himself – no fancy gadgets (I don’t mind them, but I liked Spidey being Spidey). I was able to get past all the other stuff because of this (and other things). I can certainly see that if these things bothered you, then you would not be able to get to the enjoyment part. Plus, it is hard to get geared up for enjoying a comic if you’ve been dissatisfied with the last few years. I get it completely.

    Luckily for me, like #19, I just found it fun. I hope the trend continues, but I have no great expectations.

    @#20 – if you are asking how much is the comic digitally, the price is the same as a printed copy. If you are asking how much Marvel makes per issue, well, the best I could find is this break down for indy comic books: http://www.jimzub.com/the-reality-of-mainstream-creator-owned-comics/

13. Q: Does anyone have a good guess as to how much $$ Marvel makes on one issue of these? I don’t know how much it costs to get it digitally.

14. Don’t care what the nitwitpickers (*coughnooffenceokaycough*) say, the book is decent enough for me to read. It’s not crap like the MarvelNOW ASM realaunch was.

    Hey I’m reading an imaginary Comic book, not a realistic life book! Why should I care if spider-man falling from space and surviving isn’t “real” enough? If it’s fun, it’s fine.

15. Addendum to #17 above:

    I looked at the art and the train is clearly labeled “Eurostar” so why Peter called it the “Chunnel Train,” a name no one uses and yes, I’ve taken it many, many times, is again beyond me.

    Also, Peter exits the tunnel on the French side, even though the English side would have been much closer at this point and would also put them back on Scorpio’s tail. And it apparently takes Anna forty minutes to pick up Peter, for them to decide to continuing chasing Scorpio is useless, and exit the tunnel on the far side. As they exit, the news is reporting Zodiac escaped the British armed forces waiting for them. And Peter says he should have radioed ahead and warned them but couldn’t because communications don’t work – except the news just got done saying the British armed forces were waiting for the Zodiac terrorists so it sounds like they did have warning?! And now Peter knows Scorpio is back on the loose yet Peter is all just, ho hum, escaped terrorists, injured servicemen, whatcha gonna do. Again, such a great sense of responsibility demonstrated by Slott’s Peter!

    Just more wholly unnecessary waste of panels, treading time until LivingOck could remind Peter of Peter’s real goal. This issue held maybe four pages, top, of story: The Man in Red and Peter getting closer to Scorpio. The rest was silly, illogical fluff.

16. I wholeheartedly agree with #13, although I’d give it a generous 2.

    A) The train is called the Eurostar (but Marvel probably couldn’t use the name because of trademark). The “Chunnel” is a nickname for the Channel Tunnel, built underneath the English Channel. It’s only 31 miles long, with 23 of those miles under water. It takes about 50 minutes or so to get from Paris to the Channel Tunnel, then about 20 minutes in the Tunnel, then another 40 or so minutes to get to London. So really, Peter would have been much better off fighting Scorpio when the train was on land than in the Tunnel.

    B) While the Eurostar can travel up to 186 mph on the high speed lines, while in the Tunnel the fastest the train can travel is 160 kph or 99 mph. So sorry, Slott did not do his research. It’s another fail for Slott and the Spider-offices, to go along with the egregious French.

    C) However, the Eurostar is not the fastest way to travel between Paris and London. Planes are. Since Scorpio is a Generic Evil Billionaire Type (TM) with things like Aquabases under his control and we see Parker Industries has a flying car that made the trip from London to Paris in apparently fifteen minutes, I’m assuming a private jet/flying car/superfast helicopter-thingee is not out of the realm of possibility. So why Scorpio needs to travel by something as archaic and as limiting as train – including needing to commander poor Eurostar employees as members of his Zodiac – is beyond me. It’s merely an excuse for Slott to waste pages with an unnecessary fight that did not move the story forward or give the reader any new information at all. Plus, the Eurostar is a very popular passenger train, so Peter endangered the lives of about 750 passengers plus crew with a needless fight that did not stop or impeded Scorpio and in fact distracted Peter from his original goal of finding Scorpio’s hideout. So much for Peter’s sense of responsibility and concern for civilians. Awesome job, Slott!

    D) The dialogue in this issue was PAINFUL to read. PAINFUL. Scooby Doo cartoons produced in the 1960s have more naturalistic and less on the nose dialogue.

    E) So Peter has a hard time sticking to surfaces when going 186 mph, but according to the recent .1 issues, he has no trouble clinging to airplanes at cruising speed, which is 400-500 mph. Another great editing catch by the Spider-office.

    F) Y’know, for a Generic Evil Billionaire Type (TM), Scorpio has really poor lackeys. He seems to put a lot of faith in Gemini’s predictions – only every single prediction we’ve seen of Gemini’s turn out to be RONG or Spider-Man snuck one by them. For example, so much for Gemini foreseeing Spider-Man’s death that day. Poor Scorpio. It’s so hard to co-opt free will and get good help these days.

    G) I don’t know why Peter seems so shocked Scorpio is amassing information. After all, Zodiac stole Peter’s very own Apple Watch – I mean whatever Peter is calling his version – back in Issue 1, and we learned in Issue 2 or 3 that Zodiac decrypted the data. Data Peter didn’t seem all that concerned about retrieving – including his own personal secrets – until perhaps maybe now. So rlly, Pete? Rlly? This is surprising?

17. @#13 – Thanks. I made a choice to try to not factor in the issues leading up to this issue and there are several nitpicky (to steal your term) items in here, but the enjoyment factor for me outweighed the nitpicks – at least this issue. I think that is what made it enjoyable. For the first time in quite a while, I was not sidetracked by the small points. And you are correct in your extra credit, sir. I remember when a friend of mine bought a computer that had (gasp) a WHOLE gigabyte of storage and here we are now talking zettabytes.

    @#15 – How did he aim his landing? There was some science done and we factored in comics. Yep. That explains it. Plus the Chunnel is coated in Teflon. Yeah, that’s it.

18. Also, I find it hilarious Peter is having such trouble sticking to a train when in ASM #1 he stuck to a friggin’ SPACE CAPSULE. Considering Slott wheeled out that one when people were complaining about the ridiculousness of Spidey’s space jump last issue, you’d think he wouldn’t have Peter struggling so much here.

    Did they ever explain how Peter managed to AIM his landing, BTW?

19. @13
    Don’t forget after Sanjay sabotage it for the Black Cat in the first place. Plus, Black Cat had her “nerd” glasses on to show how smart she was for sabotaging the device because you know, science.

20. Nice work, Mark

    For my own review, I gave this issue about 2.5 out of 5, or a C-. While this issue is fun, popcorn fare and we get some developments that’ve been building since issue #1, how we arrived here is quite a different matter. It also falls back into the pattern of Spider-Man having to rely way too much on others for help, as he almost seems incapable of doing anything on his own in this comic. The most ridiculous example for me was when he asked Anna Maria to speak “English” when she told him the high-speed rail was moving at 300 km/h. Remember, Spider-Man is a scientist, and as a scientist, he should how all about the metric system, including how to convert metric to US standard units, since the metric system is the universal system of measurement among scientists. At the very least, as a Science Major, he definitely would’ve studied it alongside U.S. Standard measurements. And don’t forget, we just saw last issue how Spider-Man was able to do complex mathematical equations in his head in order to do his free fall to Paris.

    Oh, and another little Nerdy Nitpick, while “vous etes les bienvenus” does literally translate into “you are welcome,” that’s not actually the correct way to say “you’re welcome” in French in reply to merci beaucoup (thank you). Unless you happen to be a French speaking person in Canada. In this case, Doc Ock should have said to Anna Maria “je t’en prie.”

    As for the “extra credit,” I believe 1 Zettabyte of data comes to 1 billion terabytes. As for how Electro lost his powers? That happened in Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 3 #6 when Black Cat sabotaged the Electro dampener Peter created for his super-villain prison and it overloaded. Silk, of course, had to save both Spider-Man and Electro.

21. Its funny, I know its the artist’s representation of the Living Brain having Otto’s mind in there. Yet, as said by @4, everyone is like: “Hey why are you showing Dr. Octopus’s face in all of your eyes, Brain?” “Also, why are you starting to talk like him too?” “Never mind, we have to stop Scorpio!” A few issues from now: “Otto!” “you were in the Living Brain the whole time since Goblin Nation?” “Why didn’t we see it?” I guess much like Black Cat’s reason for trying to kill Miles in his own book: “I hate the original so much because he ruined my rep.” “I must kill this one too, because you know, reasons.”

22. @#3- I bounced between A- and B+. I think because it was a good one in a sea of disappointing issues it got the bump.

    @#4 I’m still going for a way to get a separate Superior Spider-Man to stay. Slott does a good job on that character. I think if he moved to a new Sup Spider title and someone took ASM, it could be a win all around.

    @#5 – Thanks! I must have missed it somehow.

    @#6 & #7 – Yeah, I think it was because his body was inhabited by I’m for so long, sort of like the symbiote.

    @#8 & #10 – Neil did the Superhero Schmoe thing. I believe he thinking about going to a two grade system – one for Spidey and one for Schmoe. That could be interesting. Last issue you had to disassociate the hero from Spidey, but I think this one works well as a Spidey story.

    @#9 – I agree completely.

23. @8 – I read this as “Superhero Schmoo” and had flashbacks to this cartoon: http://www.toonarific.com/pics_root//00001324/fredandbarnmeetshmoo.jpg

24. This issue was surprisingly fun. Spidey humor works a lot better when there’s no pop culture reference.

25. So no Superhero Shmoe?

26. @6 – Maybe because Ock has been inside Peter’s body (oh God) he no longer sets off his spider-sense?

27. How is Peter’s spider-sense not going off around Living Ock?
    Things like this just make me tut.

28. Electro got depowered in Volume 3, after Peter used a machine that was (I believe) meant to contain him for the Supervillain prison they were intending to build.

29. Nice to see the “Superior Spider-Man” idiocy around Otto is still in effect.

    Otto!Brain is essentially saying “CLICK! WHIRR! OBVIOUSLY EVIL STATEMENT! SENTIENT RESPONSE FROM NON-SENTIENT BEING! CLICK! WHIRR!” and no one seems to notice.

    Wanna bet that we’re going to get “Superior Spider-Man Redux” towards the end of Slott’s run, where Otto tries to “Take back” Peter’s body, and manages to succeed for an issue or two before being kicked out again? Hopefully in not as BS a manner?

30. I really enjoyed this issue, so I was expecting to disagree with the site’s reviews….
    And I still do, because I think it’s a solid B, but I’m glad you liked it as much as you did. Slott did good this time around. =)

31. Ha! That’s funny! I like Scorpio better now. 🙂

32. That caption with Spidey yelling “SCORPIO!” made me think of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QEsjd1WZuY