Amazing Spider-Man #800 Review-The Bogenrieder Perspective

“You put raisins in them! You deserve to die!”

What’s that, Crawlspacers? You thought we were gonna end this arc on a Peter and Norman’s Excellent Adventure? Fat chance! If Slott wants to end it all here, the Bogenrieder Perspective can’t just sit idly by! THE DIE IS CAST, and the ride never ends, so let’s go down swinging!

Amazing Spider-Man #800

“Go Down Swinging Conclusion”

Writer: Dan Slott

Art:

-Chapter 1: Crawling Through the Wreckage: Nick Bradshaw and Edgar Delgado

-Chapter 2: Too Many Targets: Humberto Ramos, Victor Olazaba, and Edgar Delgado

-Chapter 3: Family Infighting: Giuseppe Camuncoli, Cam Smith, and Java Tartaglia

-Chapter 4: The Goblin Triumphant: Stuart Immonen, Wade von Grawbadger, and Marte Gracia

-Almost Solitary Confinement and The Return of Harry Osborn: Giuseppe Camuncoli, Cam Smith, and Java Tartaglia

-Goodbyes: Marcos Martin and Muntsa Vicente

Editor: Nick Lowe and Devin Lewis

EiC: C.B. Cebulski

Letters: VC’s Joe Caramagna

Plot:

After a thorough curbstomping, Peter gets the rest of the Spider-Family back on their feet, with Flash promising that he’ll look after them despite wanting to help Peter take on the Red Goblin head-on. Silk points out that he should let Jonah help out (You’re biased, Cindy! He’s been in your entire solo run!) to which Peter vehemently objects, saying that this whole mess is his fault. (Eh, kind of true, but I didn’t see Jonah throwing his Hitler-stache in a garbage can in the rain.) Our jolly one himself, on the other hand, is calling up some last-minute (And plot-convenient) reinforcements in the form of Eddie Brock and Venom.

Turns out the timing is almost perfect, as Red Goblin’s next target is Mary Jane in Stark Tower. After a quick but pointless diversion to what used to be Horizon Labs, Peter arrives on-scene and they fight Red Goblin off. Because his web-shooter was damaged by Goblin biting him on the wrist, Eddie gives him the Symbiote to even the odds. (Which, although I would have preferred to get the original black costume back, still works with Ramos’ art style.) Peter takes some time out of his schedule to go save Aunt May from Normie Osborn, who has become the Goblin Childe. (Subtle.) However, he gets there a little late, as Doctor Octopus has already cast the die and took a bullet for Peter, along with Jonah trying to help with an old Spider-Slayer. (With no explanation for his sudden lack of sociopathy and Peter calling Ock a hero! Like clockwork in a Slott book.) Aunt May makes Spider-Man swear to save Normie as he swings off.

At Alchemax, Liz stalls for the time to keep from ceding control of Alchemax to Norman, and Harry pulls out a Goblin Glider (From thin air or from his butt, I guess) and the Humanitrons from ASM #791 to show Normie the Light. (Because those are the characters we wanted a resolution for!) Norman tosses Liz out of the building, which I guess turns Normie over to the good side (Even though his rampant sociopathy would demand otherwise) and Spider-Man saves her before taking the fight outside. The fight grinds to a halt as Red Goblin exposits that he left spikes in the people he and Normie attacked that will kill them at the snap of a finger, but in typical Slott fashion, a plot device comes out of thin air to save the day. It’s Flash Thompson, and even though he’s clearly weakened and was struggling to keep Silk, Miles, and Clash from crashing he came to help for the final battle. He also somehow just saved everybody with no effort and knows that Peter is Spider-Man because he overheard Silk talking to him. So how does Slott treat Flash learning his idol and hero is his best friend/former tormentee?

He doesn’t. Red Goblin just kills him, and it’s just weirdly tossed aside until the ending. And how does Peter react to his friend dying? I dunno, if he did, it wasn’t shown to us. (#@%$ it, the Venom Symbiote showed more anger at his death than Peter.)

So it all comes down to Peter and Norman fighting it out in Times Square. Peter manages to goad Norman into ditching the Carnage Symbiote, and they fight it out until Norman tries to rebond with Carnage, at which point Peter slams a flaming car on top of it and renders Green Goblin both brain-dead. Jonah tries to finish everything with a bullet to Norman’s head, but in a move that’s just as brain-dead as Norman, Peter takes the bullet for him. Jonah runs away for trying to do the right thing.

At the end of the day, Normie gets all (Not really) of the Carnage Symbiote out of his system, (Guess Spencer has to resolve that plot point) all of the Spider-heroes are fine and just handwaved off, and Norman’s brain is fried into thinking that Peter is him and he is Carnage. Flash has his funeral (With almost nobody from his tenure in other runs present, but okay.) and Peter forgives Jonah as he takes off to fight more crime as… The Amazing Spider-Man!

Thoughts:

Okay, I’m pretty winded after that whole plot dump, so it all comes down to this; Slott’s penultimate issue. Does it hold up and deliver a satisfying conclusion to every plot point that Slott brought up? (With the exception of a ton that were brought up in this issue alone and are left to be continued by Spencer.)

Yes and no. And I know that isn’t exactly detailing what my problems are with the comic, so let’s actually do my job for once and delve deeper.

For starters, the art is a point that I wanted to discuss in further detail. This issue has a whopping five artists for 80 pages of material, and that’s not even including the inkers and colorists. To be fair, I can’t name a single artist who could pull off 80 pages in under a month, so it makes sense to bring in some extra help for Stuart Immonen. (Whose art was the highlight of the artist lineup and the comic in general.) And in a thematic sense, Slott did play his cards right and brought in alumni artists from his run on Spider-Man; Humberto Ramos and Giuseppe Camuncoli are both major mainstays of his tenure and do deserve one final “Oo-rah” before the run closes out.

That said, given how Marcos Martin only did a few issues of Slott’s ASM (I know he did a good number of issues for the BND era, so you guys can’t fault me for complaining about his presence) it makes me wonder why Stefano Caselli didn’t get to do one of the shorter vignettes. Granted, he was doing work on Invincible Iron Man around the same time (Though that excuse is a little dubious given that Invincible Iron Man #600 also had several artists sharing duties.) but given that he bookended Spider-Island (Arguably one of Slott’s peaks) and did the majority of the art for Ends of the Earth (One of SlOtto’s more thematically important arcs and setting up Superior Spider-Man) his absence from a bunch of well-known Spider-alumni is a little odd. Ryan Stegman is also noticeably missing, which also raises questions considering his art helped Superior Spider-Man sell in the first place, but I suppose they just needed as many artists as it took to meet deadlines. It’s even weirder considering Nick Bradshaw’s bizarre inclusion, even though the most connection he has to ASM is his cover work for Guardians of the Galaxy and the Venomverse saga.

Where I will give credit is that none of the artists misses the mark with their art; the only real weakness is in the inks of Ramos’ and Camuncoli’s art; Victor Olazaba and Cam Smith give respectively too thick or too thin of a line to make their art work to the best of its ability. What did surprise me was the uptick in quality from Ramos’ last arc on ASM; after a dull and mediocre tenure on Mark Waid’s Champions (A mediocre and uninteresting book in and of itself) I was not expecting this uptick in quality. Granted, the usual Ramos art problems are there (weird proportions, odd facial expressions and a lack of basic understanding of anatomy) but they are in much shorter supply and apply on a much more conceptual level than in the actual application of the art.

Something else I was not expecting but thoroughly enjoyed was the scene between Doctor Octopus and Goblin Childe. (God they need to work on making less-derivative names.) Not only does Ramos’ caricature-styled art surprisingly work on mid-transformation Normie (That smirk is terrifying) but it was a well-choreographed fight, which was something that translated across all of the artists who were drawing fight scenes. We tend to overlook combat choreography when it comes to comic books, but the positioning of damage and characters goes a long way to establish continuity in single scenes, and I appreciate that. Not only that but the fight scenes from place-to-place flow seamlessly, even with the change of artists. Granted, those scenes are kind of undercut by the sudden inclusion of things never mentioned before (Jameson’s spare Spider-Slayer was never mentioned before this issue and Ock’s unexplained entrance and heel-face-turn from Hailing HYDRA were jarring plot elements) but I have to give credit where credit is due. And who can forget “You put raisins in [The cookies]! You deserve to die!”

What doesn’t deserve credit is Flash’s death and the odd but useless inclusion of the Spider-Family. Unlike the Bat-Family, who for the most part keep in close contact with the exception of Red Hood (Hell, Detective Comics right now works as a team book for the rest of the Bat-Family) the Spiders keep little to contact with each other. The most communication they’ve had with each other is linked exclusively to Peter, and his attention has been more towards Cindy and Miles. (The former getting even more if we count pre-Spider-Verse.) They have absolutely no chemistry with each other (Not so much a web of friends and more of a bunch of directions on a compass) and just served as cannon fodder for the Red Goblin to trounce upon and show how powerful he is. (Which does little to explain how he suddenly becomes nerfed when Peter and the Symbiote team up; I hate power-leveling because it just becomes a show of one-upmanship as opposed to a fight of wits.) Not only that, but it feels weird to just sideline them. Granted, I’m tired of Peter having to rely on others for help, but that just makes their conclusion unnecessary in the bigger scheme of things; for a fight as personal as Peter and Norman’s, they make that very personal conflict grind to a halt whenever they show up, whether it’s in-action or in the hospital with red pain needles jammed in their sides.

Mary Jane’s use was short, but she was at least somewhat effective as a motivational speaker. Aunt May cradling Doctor Octopus’ corpse claiming that he was a good man, however, was not. Because not only does it try and fail to convince me that he’s somehow a good guy again (I’ve learned not to care anymore) but it doesn’t come off as genuine because Aunt May is begging Spider-Man to save Normie while holding a man who was trying to kill Normie in her arms because she claims he’s a good man. And don’t get me started on that teaser page where he’s joining Horizon Labs, because it comes off less as seeding a good idea and more as just circle-jerking Ock one more time before trying to say “Look, guys! My run started at Horizon, now it ends at Horizon! Aren’t I clever?” Spoiler alert: no, you’re not.

Also on my list of apathy is Harry’s arc of becoming Harry Osborn again and learning to care about his son; not only has this arc already been burned out by starting WAY back in ASM (2015) #7, with little-to-no development until the last six or seven issues ago, but Emma/Emily Osborn’s inclusion and her contribution to him returning to his old name doesn’t carry any weight, nor does the added teaser image of the Carnage Symbiote still being inside Normie.

Even worse is the death of Flash Thompson. Per a Slott comic, somebody has to die to sell the threat, and due to rumormongering on /co/ by SpoilerAnon, people were worried that it was going to be Mary Jane. While I’m glad that it wasn’t her and that a pointless character culling on par with Spider-Verse was avoided, Flash’s death was by far one of the worst comic deaths that I’ve ever seen. Not only does his death not really make sense given how he can heal himself with the Anti-Venom Symbiote (A Symbiote that can heal itself, I might add) but he goes out like both a chump and without any fanfare. Given how Flash has grown since the Heroic Age into one of the most-developed characters that Marvel has (Becoming an Avenger at one point and a Guardian of the Galaxy) his death should have more impact to both Peter and the supporting cast. Not only this but with the revelation of Flash learning that Peter is Spider-Man, there should have been more impact than “Oh hey, I know you’re Spider-Man now. Time to Gwen Stacy myself and escape the last issue!”

But not only does Peter not really seem to care that one of his closest friends died, but the Venom Symbiote cares more than Peter. (Granted, the Symbiote should care about Flash, given they were partners (Albeit unwilling for some part of it) for six years, but it seems weird that Peter never brings him dying up until his funeral.)  Even worse is the fact that none of his supporting cast or allies from other titles don’t show up; we don’t hear jack from Black Cat. (An ex who acknowledged their past relationship not even a year ago in Venom Inc.) or from Valkyrie. (A character who appeared as his romantic partner in both his Secret Avengers and Thunderbolts tenures.) You would think that, in this age of heroes making a big deal of coming back together as allies, that more Avengers and heroes would come to the funeral of their comrade. Not even Andi, arguably one of his closest friends in his own supporting cast, is there. But for some reason, the Spider-Family (Who have tertiary, if any, relation to him and are connected solely by their power sets.) are present, as is Venom of all people. For the death of one of my favorite characters to come out in the past decade to feel so underwhelming feels like a major misstep on Marvel’s part.

Finally, the ending is surprisingly dull and apathetic until the very last page, where it tries to make a positive spin out of all of this. That’s not entirely accurate, but one of the things Peter is most known for is his sense of guilt; it drives him, and the guilt of letting one of his closest friends dying should be anchoring him down. But on the very last page, it tries to spin Peter as coming back, better than ever, for Spencer’s run. And it really shouldn’t feel that way. Especially when you consider that Peter took a bullet for the Green Goblin (A character who infamously threw his girlfriend off a bridge both to get at Peter and simply because he could, I might add) there’s so many bizarre moments of Peter acting in a way that doesn’t feel like him, even within the parameters Slott has set for him. It tries so hard to make the ending an optimistic one (Optimism and happiness in a Spider-Man story have to be earned, especially with a character so burdened by guilt) (Not to mention that Peter got shot protecting the brain dead Green Goblin) that some of Peter’s supposedly heroic choices come off as contrived for the sake of the Slott Plott. (A common reoccurrence in Slott’s ASM run.)

At the end of the day, ASM 800 has a small number of really good moments, whose connecting parts are dull and/or flat-out badly executed. For a milestone as important as 800 issues for a continuing title and the final main issue of Dan Slott’s almost ten years on Spider-Man, an ending of this magnitude should have had far more impact than it really did. In the end, I was not furious like I expected to be; or happy to end here, as I wanted to be; instead, I was disappointed, but not surprised.

Final Grade: C+

Next issue: In Slott’s final issue, Spider-Man rides a skateboard made of civilians to save the day! Take notes, Rocket Racer! Spider-Man’s got the best wheels in town!