The Amazing Spider-Man #668 Review

 The whole city’s infected by Spider-Island! While the Marvel Super Heroes are holding down the front line, the real Spider-Man is benched from the defense effort! But old Pete Parker’s not gonna take that lying down is he?

“SPIDER-ISLAND Part Two: Peter Parker, the Unspectacular Spider-Man”

Written by Dan Slott

Illustrated by Humberto Ramos

Inked by Victor Olazaba

Colored by Edgar Delgado

Lettered by VC’s Joe Caragmagna

THE PLOT: Spider-Man is told to shoo away by the Avengers and keep from confusing the heroes on which Spider-Man is the real one. Spurred one by Mary Jane and Carlie, Peter leaps into the fray as himself and leads a gang of super powered citizens to help fight off the bad guys.

LONG STORY SHORT: The day saved for now, Reed Richards begins to search for the cause of the Spider virus at Horizon Labs. Peter and Carlie begin to investigate at Police Headquarters, with Carlie correctly guessing Miles Warren to be the cause of the mayhem. The issue ends with the two unawares as the White Rabbit lurks in the shadows, ready to pounce.

MY THOUGHTS: This arc still isn’t grabbing me as much as it seems to have grabbed a lot of other readers, but I did find this issue to be an improvement over the last one. The art was more consistent and I liked how Peter was written…mostly. The overall interest of Spider Island has waned for me personally, but in all honesty it’s due to several other factors including real life and DC’s new 52 company-wide relaunch. Aside from all that, the idea still remains to be interesting to me but the execution isn’t all I think it could be. Let’s dive into it…

Starting at the top, the whole business of Peter being benched by the other super heroes smack of being convinent for the plot. I can understand the Marvel Heroes being pressured by the sheer number of Spider-powered people, but to not include the original in the fight against them just doesn’t make any sense. To address Luke Cage’s point about Spidey being “in no condition to fight”, (despite the fact that he wasn’t even looking at him and Spidey seemed fine to me) Peter has a heightend recovery rate. He wasn’t hit that badly, and his experience alone gives him the edge over fighting people with powers similar to his. Heck, he fought Venom and Carnage alone several times and both of those characters were many times his strength and he still managed to get the better of them. Granted through different means, but also look at his fights with Ben Reilly. Peter’s been in this situation before, and has the best experience with this situation. Also, how many times has he fought alongside the Avengers and the FF? Don’t they have drills for this sort of scenario where one of them takes a beating? Finally, I didn’t buy him getting confused for the fake Spideys in the last issue and I don’t buy it now. He can just stick to Shang Chi or Wolverine. There are a number of reasons why him leaving the fight isn’t the best solution and the scene comes off as being made just so we can have another sad sack instance of Peter Parker being a loser. It’s ridiculous.

That was the biggest thing that struck out against this story for me from a logical standpoint. There’s more, but let’s go to a more subjective annoyance.

Carlie Cooper.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say again. I do not have a personal bias towards Carlie Cooper. I don’t think she’s crazy or evil or whatever. But it’s clear in this story that she’s being bigged up for the sake of being bigged up and nothing more. In this issue specifically…it’s really much. Mary Jane sings Carlie’s praises to Peter to get him to act by using this title’s favorite buzz word “responsible”, and almost every line of dialogue Carlie has is condescending towards Peter. I know that she doesn’t know he’s Spider-Man and that she’s a cop and whatnot, but there’s something about her in this issue that really wants her to be the hero of the story. We get her origin, we see her leap into action, we see her “being responsible”. It makes sense for her character and in essence none of this is bad…at the same time there’s an overtone of grandeur with the woman. Mary Jane just doesn’t say to Peter “Hey look at Carlie, do what she’s doing.” She makes a speech about it like it’s earth shattering. It’s just weird.

And how the heck did she leap at the conclusion that the Jackal was behind it all? I suppose in a world where Norman Osborn can come back from the dead, people are used to other people returning from the grave, but this didn’t seem reasonable or logical. Someone could have been following Jackal’s legacy or it could have been a clone of the Jackal. Peter should also be thinking to himself “Wait, didn’t I see this guy die after falling off of the Daily Bugle years ago?” I know that the Jackal appeared in a Punisher comic years ago inexplicably alive, but this should still be addressed to Spider-Man. I hate this skipping around logic just to get to the next part of the story, it feels very unnatural.

I could go on about how no one seemingly died during the big fight or why everyone with Spider-Powers is automatically a beast at using them, but in comparison to the above it didn’t really bother me.

On to the positives. Ramos’ art was much better in this issue compared to #667. The shots of Peter, MJ, Norah and Carlie looked really nice, and even the fight scenes looked clearer. Venom and Anti-Venom looked really good as well, and this all reminded me why I like Ramos as an artist. The cartoony, stylistic designs are fun to see from character to character.

Even better was Peter’s characterization. Aside from slapping Luke Cage across the head and saying, “Yeah, forget that. You’ve got me in this fight whether you like it or not.” I liked his moments in this issue. Loved the fact that he lead the charge of citizens to help the super heroes. I also found his line of reasoning concerning the virus to make more sense than it did when he was concerned about Carlie in #667. In general, the overall attitude the character had was more familiar to me. The reserved, not-really-caring-about-what-people-think kind of demeanor he had was nice and welcome.

Finally the scene with Peter and Carlie kissing while swinging in the air in front of MJ. I liked that because it leads to romantic tension between her and Peter, which is better than nothing in the way of romance at all.

Overall this issue was slightly better in my opinion than the last one, so it gets a grading accordingly. Not as great as others have said, but not the worst thing ever.

3/5 webs.