The Amazing Spider-Man #686 Review

 Spider-Man has failed in his mission to save the world, and now Symkaria is burning because of it…or is it? Plus, Mysterio and Chameleon yuck it up, a switch up with the Avengers, and Mary Jane…BUYS A NIGHTCLUB?

ENDS OF THE EARTH PART 4

Written by Dan Slott

Illustrated by Stefano Caselli

Colored by Frank Martin Jr.

Lettered by VS’s Joe Caramagna

THE PLOT: Spidey, the Widow and Silver Sable are all aghast at the flaming result of Doc Ock turning on the world…only that it turns out to be a trick by the Mysterio. Chameleon disguises as Ock and attacks the heroes, but the ruse is seen through pretty immediately.

LONG STORY SHORT: Spidey convinces Mysterio to join their team and help save the world. He leads the heroes to Guatemala, where they’re greeted by the mind-controlled Avengers.

MY THOUGHTS: My thoughts are the same as before. This is not good.

The recurring problem with Ends of the Earth is how utterly basic it is. The story isn’t the most original thing ever, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It is in this instance, and with every issue, Slott feels as though he’s having so much fun writing the story that he forgot to sit down and give it much thought. He just keeps going and going and going, meanwhile several questions come up.

1. If the whole Symkaria in flames thing was a ruse by Mysterio, why didn’t Spider-Man’s spider sense go off? He says his sensors weren’t working, but his spider sense should have.

2. I still can’t get over the fate of the planet being left in the hands of six scientists from New York. Why don’t they enlist the help of other potential scientifically minded people across the globe via satellite?

3. At what point did the Black Widow suddenly know this secret of Chameleon’s that we’ve never heard about until now? While it’s easy (and going by the nature of the book, logical) to assume it’s because both are Russian, I figure it’s a spy thing. Still, we’re just now learning this? And she’s not used it to have S.H.I.E.L.D. go after and arrest this top-ranked Communist spy?

4. Doctor Octopus has apparently been planning this scheme since issue #650, which was around January 2011. During all that time, it never once occurred to Mysterio that Doc Ock plans to kill everybody? Of course, he could always turn on the heroes in the next issue, and Spider-Man even predicts that he might. With that in mind, why is he free to roam around and hypothetically do whatever he wants in the heroes’ ship? Why didn’t they imprison him like they did Sandman or at least tie him up so he couldn’t try anything?

5. On that note, if Sandman’s doing all of this for the sake of his supposed daughter, wouldn’t the thought of Doc Ock possibly destroying the world occur to him that it would involve killing his little girl as well? She might’ve fried when Ock attacked New York just to make a point. So with that being said, and having known that Spider-Man is aware of Sandman’s daughter, wouldn’t he enlist his help as well?

  These are the things that  tend to adorn Slott’s writing. Everything I questioned is convenient for the issue’s plot, and that’s a crappy way to tell a story. It relies on character contrivances rather than logical behavior for believable people. If this is a story that has people trying to save the world, so many thing would have happened either already or before it was time for them to be introduced at exactly the right time. Uatu Jackson figures to go after Ock’s base, several days after they first attempted to try and find the satellites. We’re  supposed to buy that  in a room full of geniuses no one thought to do that. It undermines their intellect while we’re supposed to roll with the idea that these people really are some of the smartest people in the country.

Undermining is a big theme here. The whole ruse of the destroyed Symkaria is ruined because of a gag panel with Mysterio and Chameleon. Chameleon, dressed as Doctor Octopus, goes into battle and vocally complains to Mysterio about the explosion Silver Sable threw at him, ruining the disguise. It plays like a cartoon, and I’m not even sure if it’s meant for laughs or to honestly further the plot. I will say that I liked Mysterio and Chameleon’s scenes in this issue. They were the highlight of the book because they just were not taking the situation seriously. Quentin Beck was trolling the super heroes and he was loving it. He wasn’t played to be villainous, he was played to be a jerk, and that was funny. But when their plan and their success relies on them acting seriously and they fail because they don’t, to quote Doctor Octopus, it becomes a total farce.

The tone of the story is another problem. As I said, there’s nothing inherently bad about doing a simple superhero vs. super villain plot. Part of the fun of comics is how it gets to be basically WWF wrestling for nerds with the superpowered throw downs. Every Marvel crossover in the past 25 years has been about that. But this is not 1994 anymore, and you can not do epic storylines without emotionally engaging the reader. The word “epic” should evoke a sense of have the floor beneath your feet beginning to move, and a feeling of a loss of control while being excited to see what happens next. This story, just like Spider-Island, has tried to evoke the suspense and wonder that classic storylines like “Death of Gwen Stacy”, “Dark Phoenix Saga”, “Secret Wars” and even “Civil War” have all done, and it falls flat. Part of that may be due to Marvel’s tendency to market everything in the Stan Lee manner, where everything ever means the world will irrevocably change. At the same time, there are people right now including “Ends of the Earth” in the same conversation as those aforementioned storylines, and it just is not true. This is not a great story, in fact it isn’t a very good one. I suppose it’s marginally entertaining, in the sense that it’s something to look at and distract you for ten minutes. But at no point could anyone honestly say to me that they thought the world was going to fry like it was shown to at the end of the last issue. There’s no suspense because the story hinges on a two-way street. Either Spider-Man saves the world or he doesn’t, and he’s not going to fail because every issue dedicates banal dialogue and inner monologue towards this new found sense of self doubt he espouses. Were Spider-Man to seriously fail, other characters would make him feel better about himself and he would get over it, or he would get a second chance to prove himself by preventing an even bigger tragedy, which would require the patience of the reader to stomach through the same type of story all over again. But as I’ve said before, none of this would be an issue if it were told interestingly, but it’s not.

Finally, Slott needs to cut this crap of having Peter blame himself for every little thing. Him making the inventions and technology that Ock employs to battle the Avengers is NOT his fault, and it’s such an OCD and anal way to view the situation as his doing that it makes him look childish and stupid. The fact that the issue ended with his realization that the tech was his an him saying “THIS IS ALL MY FAULT!” implies that he’s right. Screw that horsecrap. Ever since taking over the title, Dan Slott has been chasing Amazing Fantasy #15, which is a fool’s errand. The fact that he goes about it so badly is what makes it frustrating to read. Peter Parker has a guilt complex. That’s absolutely a part of who he is. But for him react like that in this situation is lazy and stupid. Same goes for him having active inner dialogue about being responsible and having the power to inflict positive change. Stop telling and start showing. Did anyone of you reading this log onto your computers and think to yourselves “As a person with sufficient, functioning eyeballs and an interesting in what the ASM reviewer thinks of the latest issue, I’m of course going to read his review.” NO. You just do it.

1.5/5 webs