Amazing Spider-Man (2015) #11 Review: The Bogenrieder Perspective

“Bet…. you didn’t see that coming.”

Mark already discussed it, Andrew already made a song reference, and I’m late by a week. So why not? ~Peter’s turning Japanese for Bobbi, turning Japanese, I really think so.~….What? Guilty pleasure.

Amazing Spider-Man (2015) #12

“Scorpio Rising Pt. 3: Signs from Above”

Writer: Dan Slott

Pencils: Giuseppe Camuncoli

Inks: Cam Smith

Colors: Marte Garcia

Editor: Nick Lowe and Devon Lewis

Plot:

So, we kick off our issue with Spidey, Anna Maria, Living Ock and Mockingbird in England. (Beam me up, Fury!) Fury for some reason is still on the International Space Station (don’t they have surface to orbit and backwards craft readily available at SHIELD?) Peter’s brilliant plan to take out several satellites have bitten him in the butt (Are you surprised? I’m not), and everybody is down for the count. Scorpio begins his grand master plan, (We’ll shoot Spider-Man into the sun with his damn rocket!) and begins his satanic ritual to summon a rave. (Party on, kids!)

With Fury giving them a tip, (Don’t hold Pete’s hand the whole damn way, bud!) the gang hauls rear over to Scorpio’s secret lair and kick him to next year. (U C wat I did thar, Slatt? Wait, Mark did it already. Sh*t.) Scorpio then gets his secret identity revealed; he’s not just Peter’s shareholder, he’s Peter’s shareholder and Fury’s grandson!… I think? (I am your brother’s cousin’s nephew’s wife’s roommate!)

Scorpio gets his reward for completing his task, a view of the next 365.2422 days. (I can do more research than Slott in a single second. God) Mockingbird flirts with Spider-Man, Anna Maria flirts with Spider-Man, and Living Ock decides to go Anakin Skywalker on us and accelerate his plans.

Thoughts:

Did you guys miss me?

…No? Darn it. Well, you’re probably wondering why it took me so long to crank this thing out…. No? I’ll tell you anyways.

The first reason is that I have to go out of the way of my way to go to my local comic shop and I like that place way too much to get a Comixology account. So we can chalk it up to procrastination. Wonderful work ethic right there, Neil, you say.

But wait! There’s more!

The next reason is that I was so scared to open the issue with how high a chance it was going to suck.

I think I’ll become a psychic now. Because this issue was a total letdown. If you recall my last review, I praised that even though it wasn’t great by any standards, it held up thanks to great artwork and its ability to work as a setup for this issue. What makes this issue fail, and hurts the issue even more, is the lack of the ability to follow up on that stakes-building.

The art, thankfully, is still as amazing as usual. I’m not sure what more I can say about it. Camuncoli continues to deliver his usual packages on time and in good quality. That’s about all I can say.

The dialogue feels incredibly stilted, particularly between the main characters. It feels like a combination between the Adam West Batman cartoon and Agents of Shield show, something that doesn’t mix well. Spidey and Mockingbird’s banter between each other stands out for how stilted it is in comparison to other, more natural dialogue in the rest of my pull box. Also, I won’t be talking about the Spidey/Mockingbird relationship thing; it’s been discussed under Mark’s comment board, and I prefer not to talk about Slott’s fanfic pairings.

Look, I’ll be honest. This feels like the Young Adult novel craze, from Hunger Games to The 5th Wave. It gets monotonous after seeing the same crap shoved down your throat for a while. The finale for this supposedly ground-shaking arc feel flat, and it shows, with  nothing feeling accomplished by any party and everything fizzling hopelessly into nothingness. I got more entertainment out of guys dressed in Pikachu suits dancing to Flo Rida. And that’s a sad day.

Negative Neil makes his comeback!

Final Grade: D