“You know we can’t just leave him here, right?”
Gog forgives you for all your sins. Gog be with us. Gog–just read the review.
Amazing Spider-Man #43
“True Companions, Pt 3”
Writer: Nick Spencer
Pencils: Ryan Ottley
Inks: Cliff Rathburn ad Ryan Ottley
Colors: Nathan Fairbairn
Letters: VC’s Joe Caramagna
Editors: Nick Lowe and Kathleen Wisneski
Editor-in-Chief: CB Cebulski
Plot:
Peter and Boomerang run away from Gog, but in all of Boomerang’s idiocy, he leads Gog to the surface, where Mayor Kingpin and the… FBI? National Guard? NYPD? Some guys in helicopters and who have armor and guns, are waiting to take Gog out. But when Boomerang’s projectiles remind Gog of the toy he had in his old life, he becomes docile and happy. Peter has Boomerang throw a sleeperang into a truck, which Gog shrinks down to chase, and he gets knocked out.
Eventually, Peter gets a Pym Particle inhibitor collar working as a joint project with Jamie, and he and Boomerang take Gog home to be the new house pet of the Parker/Robertson/Myers household.
Oh, yeah, and Sin-Eater stands in front of a door before it explodes.
Thoughts:
So after about two months of absolutely nothing, my comic addict brain is happy to have some Amazing Spider-Man in my system. It’s not any points in its favor or against it, but I just thought it’d be nice to say that it’s good to be back. In addition, I’ve also signed on to review Venom for the front page, so make sure to look out for my upcoming review for the conclusion of the Venom Island arc.
Back to ASM, I think that there’s been some genuine progression regarding Peter’s personal dilemmas, and how he processes what’s a theoretical L into a W. I would have genuinely liked a conclusion to the whole Boomerang/Kingpin storyline, but now we’re getting some genuine progression on it and it has the potential to really go somewhere once the Sin-Eater/Sins Rising stuff is wrapped up.
Ryan Ottley, once again, nails the lineart, at least for the pages that Cliff Rathburn inks. The problem there is that Ottley shares the same problem as Stegman where his inks are way rougher when they do their own stuff, and it looks way cleaner when Cliff Rathburn is doing the inks and clean-up work. As always, Nathan Fairbairn does a really good job with flat but very well-saturated colors to make Peter consistently pop within the panels he’s in.
I think the weirdest development of the entire thing is Peter domesticating Gog, of all creatures, and making him into a house pet. I’m not sure how the rest of 
the Crawlspace feels about it, but it’s a status quo change I’m certainly not against, but I have a feeling that it will either be undone by the end of Spencer’s run (This is way too big of a status quo change to be a permanent one, but if it was I’d be genuinely surprised and okay with it going forward.) or undone whenever somebody takes over from Spencer. (Though that assumes the human race survives past 2021.) I think it’s a fun shakeup because not only does it provide a new dynamic for Peter, but it allows him to shine in a way that Slott hand-waved and barely tried to provide depth to: the ability to reform the rogues in his life.
Within Spencer’s run, Peter has been able to at the very least empathize with the reasonable ones among his rogues that others (Boomerang at the very least, though that could just be Fred playing the long con, and I like to think that he was certainly sorry for how Gibbon has been treated prior to his death in Hunted) and generally try to put their abilities to more productive use or try to set them on the straight and narrow. And Peter even points out that, even though he doesn’t know what’s going on in Gog’s head, he’s at least willing to bet that Gog is something of a kindred spirit in how they’ve tried to deal with tragedy.
Peter’s entire meta-arc over the course of Spencer’s run has been setting things right (With MJ, with Felicia, with Aunt May, and even people like Robbie early on) and Peter here has the capacity to make things better with Gog and help him; in short, set things right. It’s one of the stronger elements of Spencer’s interpretation of Peter, that he genuinely uses the resources he has to make the lives of those he can help better, even without the screw you money he had during the Parker Industries era.
But Gog’s totally gonna die to artificially raise the stakes, isn’t he?
While it’s not particularly climactic as an ending, it’s a good and smart one with what’s been presented to us and as an overall progression of not just the Lifeline Tablet narrative, but for Peter’s overall meta-arc of setting things right. It’s not the emotionally heavy one we needed coming back from the hiatus, but it’s one that, at the very least, makes sense.
This has been Father Hulk of the Gog Assembly, here to smash away your sins.
Final Grade: B+
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I hate to say it.. Even though I love Ottley’s art, that panel where Spidey is saving that girl, where’s her other leg. Yes, I know it’s behind the one that you can see, but it should still be noticeable.
@Mark- It’s something that eventually you get trained to notice. Each inker has a very specific style that you begin to notice depending on how the penciller inks their own work. So, once you figure out which is which, it’s way easier to figure out in the long run.
As for what Sin-Eater is after, my best guess is something that can get him up close and personal with the Lethal Legion. Even if Sin-Eater is buffed by his resurrection via Kindred, the Lethal Legion are a step far above his power level, and even one of them would require something at Project PEGASUS or wherever he is to even the odds.
Hey Neil – I cannot spot differences in inkers and it always amazes me when you point things out like that. Any idea on who is supposed to be behind the door that explodes? Did Sin Eater make it explode inside? Are we supposed to see it and think, “Oh! That could be…”? Because it makes no sense to me.