Amazing Spider-Man #791 Review: The Bogenrieder Perspective

A one-and-done in modern comics? Say it isn’t so!

Amazing Spider-Man #791

“Fall of Parker, Pt 3: Back to Ground”

Writers: Dan Slott

Pencils: Stuart Immonen

Inks: Wade von Grawbadger

Colors: Marte Gracia

Editors: Nick Lowe and Devin Lewis

Plot:

Things are finally looking up for our man Peter Parker. He’s got a loving (not really) girlfriend in Bobbi Morse, aka Mockingbird, he’s got an editorial job at the Daily Bugle, and he’s kicking some serious butt as the Amazing Spider-Man! What could possibly go wrong?

Surprisingly, not much on his end. He manages to get to work on time and has his first meeting with Robbie as the new science editor. To that end, the only really embarrassing thing that happens is that he is company-mandated to use an Alchemax Droid. (Oh, the irony.) Our new Sajani stand-in, Rubylyn Bato, makes her presence known quickly by arguing that Robbie playing favorites with Peter. (Valid point, but I wouldn’t say it to his face.) Meanwhile, at Humanitech Industries, Bobbi (Who made all of their new security) makes some statements that would make /pol/ flip a table regarding the voice settings of their new android units. Peter, through Bobbi, scores the Daily Bugle an exclusive interview, but everything goes awry when Colin (That schrewd nark we keep seeing that Peter replaced) decides to break one open to see how it works. (That journalistic integrity there.) Peter intervenes and saves everybody, but the Bugle team is thrown out with the threat of lawsuits if they leak out to the public. (Breaking news: one of our writers broke his NDA and nearly killed everybody in the room!)

After seeing Bobbi’s boss (With the weirdest name ever; Xandar Zynn? Dafaq?) overreact, Peter and Bobbi decide to go snooping around. Trying to access one of the computers causes the cute little androids to attack the two, with Peter realizing that their silicon matrices are actually sand. Peter releases the matrices to reveal that it isn’t classic Spidey villain Sandman; rather, it’s Thor’s baddy, Quicksand! Convincing her takes time, but Peter gets Quicksand to leave rather than kill Xander, who flees the country. Our issue wraps up with Peter rolling out a good first paper, telling Robbie he’s home.

Oh, and there’s also some random subplot about Harry OsLyman’s nanny stealing their blood. But knowing Slott, it’ll never go anywhere, am I right?

Thoughts:

A bit of a crossover with real life. In my Intro to Communication class, I’m doing a persuasive speech (complete with slides and sources and everything; Mark will be so proud!) submitting a thesis that is generally accepted by the comic community, but not people at large; that there are no bad characters, only bad writers. (If you’ve ever read my posts on Comicvine, it is one of my fundamental pillars when it comes to writing comics.)

One of my primary examples of this is Dan Slott, primarily using elements from (You guessed it!) Amazing Spider-Man.

Now, to be fair, I was pleasantly surprised by this issue, because it wasn’t either infuriating or dull beyond any belief. I just think it was rather middling; harmless, one-and-done, and well-told technically, but wasn’t really that great when looking back.

I feel like I should discuss the obvious elephant in the room because I know a lot of people aren’t happy with it. And, to be frank, I’m not exactly happy with it, but I feel like I’ve just become so desensitized to how utterly trash this book can be. That elephant in the room being Peter and Bobbi’s relationship, and personally, I’ve mostly gotten over it. While I vastly prefer Peter and MJ (Or Felicia if I’m that desperate) I’m willing to live with it until the relationship inevitably meets a fate similar to that of Parker Industries; that being six feet under and completely forgotten about by the next creative team. I dunno, I get a certain amount of glee from Slott completely contradicting his own words with this relationship.

You know, those ones from 2015 where he said that MJ is too conventionally attractive and that their relationship is shallow because of her conventional attractiveness? (Despite several decades worth of stories proving that MJ’s personality and their relationship is anything but shallow.) I just find it hilarious that Slott is having to jump through hoops to try and justify Peter and Bobbi’s relationship when she is an athletic, supermodel-tier blonde. They have some semblance of a dynamic that comes through at times, (Save those really cringy panels when Peter is trying to come up with shipping names for them) but it doesn’t really work when Peter is turning down an offer to sleep with his supposedly great girlfriend because of “MY BRAND NEW JOB!” The only time they express any amount of affection for each other is when they’re not even within proximity to each other. And it’s made even harder to like that Peter has to share his spotlight with Bobbi in his own book. (Rich coming from a guy who has Peter take on a sidekick 7 issues into his own story, I know.)

The Bugle is a solid plus. While I do think to retread, in general, is a typically poor move (Again, rich coming from a guy who put Peter back at Horizon) it’s a new position that we’ve never see Peter in before. He’s not a photographer, but rather an editor, something that’s new, and thus refreshing. I sincerely hope Slott doesn’t try to make us grow attached to the people under him because I have yet to see more Betty since ASM 789. Colin is more annoying than he has any right to be and, as I mentioned, Rubylyn is basically another Sajani clone. (Who, might I mention, has the role of “person-who-cuts-Peter-down-a-peg” already placed in Mockingbird.)

Something I found equally refreshing is that Peter is the one who is the “leading man.” One of my complaints in Vol 4, that is a consistent complaint throughout many of my reviews, (And, in retrospect, is a fatal flaw of Vol 3, where he just sits in the corner of Spider-Verse for about half the event) is that Peter is more a follower than a leader in his own book. Rather than lead, he instead follows the lead of other characters (i.e. Iron Man, Kaine, Spider-Gwen and SHIELD among others) and picks up what’s left to play with rather than be the “Save the day” guy. Here, he actively leads Mockingbird on the adventure, and it’s he who figures out the puzzle of Quicksand being in the robots rather than Bobbi being propped up in his place.

But in a weird way, it comes off as foreign. It took us so long to get to a reasonable point where Peter is the main character in his own book that the most I could muster was an “Eh…. good job, I guess.”

Aunt May continues to be useless; her only motivation seems to be having grand-kids now that Jay is gone, and rather than play matchmaker, she doesn’t care who gives her those grand-kids. She’s just there to reinforce how great the love interest is (She did it with Carlie during BND and Big Time, Anna-Maria (Where is she, anyway?) in Superior and Vol. 3, and now we have a rinse-and-repeat with Mockingbird) and she adds nothing.

As for the nanny subplot, I could care less at this point. We have a couple dozen plotlines going on right now (Hyperbole, I know, but that’s what this feels like) and this just one of many cogs in the machine that will be left on a turned-off stove until Slott needs it, only to reheat it and find out nobody cares. I made a comment in Mark’s review that this Norman actually is the nanny, as she comes out of nowhere and suddenly has this all-important role in stealing the blood of Norman Osborn’s grand-children. I stand by this theory, and if I’m wrong… I dunno, place your suggestions in the comments, I guess.

Immonen’s art is… okay. I think I’ve said all I can about it since Legacy launched; once again, everything looks good except for the tumors in Robbie’s head and Peter’s frosted-tipped hair. Though I think it also comes down to the shiny-as-hell coloring that Marte Gracia is obsessed with.

ASM 791 is nowhere near perfect. But, at the very least, it’s a step in the right direction, being a comic that isn’t dragged out into seven issues to sell trade paperbacks. Like I said, nowhere near where I want it to be, but I think that Venom Inc will go right back to what made Slott’s ASM bad in the first place, so I’m going to live with this one and take what I can get.

Final Grade: B-

Place your bets, Crawlspacers! How long do you think Peter and Bobbi will last before they sever ties? Because in Slott’s land of No Status Quo, nothing lasts.