“At least it’s the real you. It’s always the smell that gives it away.”
ZACK YOU PROMISED.
Amazing Spider-Man (2018) #36 (Lgy. #837)
“Time After Time”
Writer: Nick Spencer
Artist: Oscar Bazaldua
Colors: Steve Firchow
Letters: VC’s Joe Caramagna
Editors: Nick Lowe and Kathleen Wisneski
Editor-in-Chief: CB Cebulski
Recap:
Spider-Man 2099 came back to the present and vanished because time shenanigans. There’s an entire event about that. Meanwhile Doctor Doom got shot in the head by Hitman but he got better because Doombot. Peter and Teresa have been running around trying to find Chameleon, who’s helping the lady from Slott’s run start a proxy war between Latveria and Symkaria. Peter has a college friend who made a Minority Report device, but hasn’t been able to get it to work. Miguel exploding got it to work, and Peter is going through the various time scenarios.
Plot:
Peter runs through multiple scenarios with the device, from the practical to the absurd, but all of them end the same: with him either dying at Doctor’s Doom’s hand or at Doom’s side in hell. Eventually, he comes across a scenario that pays off, with simply telling Doom the truth and appealing to his ego. However, the plan doesn’t involve the Doombots causing billions of dollars in property damage and destroying priceless landmarks.
Eventually, Chameleon is captured and brought into the custody of… FBI? CIA? I dunno, either way, Countess Kharkov tells an incapacitated Sable that she hacked the Doombots to convince the rest of the world to back Symkaria in a war against Latveria. Back at ESU, Peter and Jamie examine the device and Teresa begins interrogating Chameleon as a way to release pent-up anger.
Oh yeah, Miguel reunites with Tempest and their baby on the shore of a beach. You forgot he was even in this story, didn’t you?
Thoughts:
We’re at a weird point with Spencer where I was incredibly confused as to whether or not he wanted to do the 2099 event and used ASM as his backdoor pilot, or if editorial forced it upon him. Either way, the time travel stuff felt a lot more like an afterthought in issues 35 and 36, and a lot more focus on the espionage, Metal Gear-like storytelling. Zach was supposed to cover me for ASM #35, but not a lot really happened that I won’t expand upon here, so let’s settle on a C and go from there.
Starting with the art, I wasn’t a big fan of Oscar Bazaldua’s art these past two issues, especially in comparison to what Patrick Gleason put out the last two 
issues. Anatomy is really weird, as is facial expressions and line width, especially in hand sizes and gestures. Sometimes, and this is a really weird one to point out, but sometimes lines were just gone, which is indicative of either a sloppy photoshop job, or there was something wrong with the lineart to begin with. However, and this is a big “however”, Steve Firchow’s colors do a very good job of carrying the tone of the issue’s art, with very good use of lighting and fire effects to display the up-close damage. And while I’m willing to forgive fill-in artists to an extent, this is the same problem that I had with Bachalo in #14 and 15; this is one of Marvel’s flagship books, and it needs to be given fill-ins that are indicative of that caliber. Mr. and Mrs. X and Bendis’ Miles book are titles that work better with this art; not Amazing Spider-Man.
Writing-wise, I think, was a lot stronger; despite having to saddle an entire event behind him, (One that I think, having only read the Alpha and Omega and the SM 2099 one-shots, was a huge waste of time) Spencer I think had a fairly solid resolution to the storyline, with some loose ends that I don’t think were meant to be left around lingering around by accident. (Miguel’s back in the present again, I guess, and he reunites with Tempest from his last ongoing by David? And his baby? I guess?) And I’m willing to give Spencer the same slack that I give him on Secret Empire, knowing that editorial is always invasive when it least needs to be, but there’s only so much slack I can give him.
However, on a technical level, Spencer does understand the characters, and I appreciate how he writes Peter here. Appealing to Doom’s ego was very Peter-esque, and I’m glad that his cleverness was on full display to close this arc.
There’s a lot of kneecappings from being inexorably tied into an event, and having to set up for even more storylines down the road makes it a lot harder for me to call this the ending, when it’s more just a Chekov’s gun for even more stuff, like the Symkarian/Latverian war stuff and the Doombot hacking. (Which is a problem I had with Slott’s run, especially during the fourth volume.) I’m hoping that the next issue fixes this problem as a one-and-done, but after an arc suffering from heavily fluctuating issue quality, it becomes a lot more stable after a lack of tie-ins allows for more insulated.
Did it end strong?… eh. Did it wrap things up? Sure. Was it better than #35? Definitely. Looking forward to the next issue more than the arc I just closed? Yeah.
Final Grade: B-
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@Javi Trujillo — I feel like the Doctor Doom/Chameleon stuff and the 2099 story should have just been separate stories, they just don’t mesh well tonally. The low point was ASM #35, where it felt like a bunch of running around and nothing happening. I think keeping Gleason on the whole arc would have made it a lot easier to swallow and way more engaging, but there are still problems inherent to the overall structure.
@Jack Brooks — Eh, I think the idea was to have Peter punch way above his weight class and fight somebody against impossible odds. Don’t know if it really worked the way Spencer wanted aside from Peter appealing to Doom’s ego, but that’s what I got the sense of.
You were far more generous than I when it came to grades. For me it was a C at best , taken down a bit by the art. Bazaldua did much better on Miles’ book. Story wise, this felt like Spencer’s weakest as it came off very disjointed. I read Alpha, Omega, and Spider-Man 2099 and I felt like I don’t understand what the point of all this was other than it’s 2019 so the year ties in somehow with Marvel being 80 years old and 2099 80 years away. The stories all felt open ended with not much in the way of conclusion. Looking forward to moving on. In fact, at this point, I just want to get going with Kindred.
I’m not sure most Spidey/Doom stories work as well as they might on paper. The two characters don’t share a personal antagonism, their personalities seem more baffled by each other than anything else, they cross paths only infrequently, and I think, in theory, Doom (with his combination of super-tech and dark powers) should be able to mop the floor with Spidey. By now Doom should have figured out that Spider-Man is a lot smarter than he pretends to be, but he still seems to just bark “Insolent insect!” at him. And Peter doesn’t seem to feel any personal POV toward Doom.
Nice review, Neil. My favorite line of this entire post: “Miguel exploding got it to work…”
This is the first Spencer story I’ve just kind of shrugged at. There were some interesting ideas and some nice Spidey moments here and there, but it just never engaged me like I wanted it to. When I go back to read the arc in one go, I’m sure I’ll understand some of it better, but I honestly doubt I’ll like it all that much more. An unfortunate end to what has been a pretty great year for the title.