Amazing Spider-Man Vol 5 #1: The Bogenrieder Perspective

“I still got some Cheetos if you—no, wait, hold on— One Cheeto. It’s all yours. To share.”

“Let’s get down to business to defeat the Slott!” -Nick Spencer

Amazing Spider-Man (Vol 5) #1 (Lgy  No. 802)

“Back to Basics, Part One”

Writer: Nick Spencer

Pencils: Ryan Ottley

Inks: Cliff Rathburn

Colors: Laura Martin

Editor: Nick Lowe

Editor-in-Chief: C.B. Cebulski

Story:

The story follows a very non-linear pattern, but is focused around Peter and the Avengers fighting an alien invasion. (With the Avengers and co. not exactly happy with his presence.)

It turns out that, surprise surprise, a supervillain as your roommate (Fred Myers, aka the Bombastic Boomerang!) isn’t exactly the best setup. On the plus side, Peter is now a respected member of the media again, as the science editor for the Daily Bugle!… Only he isn’t, as a plagiarism test reveals that Peter’s doctoral thesis was made using the work of Otto Octavius, so naturally, his professional credibility is all but ruined, and Robbie is forced to let him go from the Bugle to save their reputation. Aunt May is also extremely disappointed in Peter for not being willing to take responsibility for his actions. Only MJ seems to be on his side, with Peter basically telling us that he used to be married but not flat out saying “I signed a deal with the devil that erased my marriage.”

On the Spider-Man side of things, Wilson Fisk (aka Golden Corral) has offered Spider-Man the key to the city while declaring zero-tolerance on all other heroes. This leads the heroes to believe Spidey is Kingpin’s whipping boy, and it goes on and on. However, in a self-reflection, Peter comes to terms that he was, in fact, not responsible when it came to his doctoral thesis. However, in said reflection, he finds a pattern in the alien portals and gets sucked into one. However, it turns out instead to be… Mysterio! So Peter beats him up.

Peter wins, but in that moment where he thought he was going to die, he realizes he was missing something in his life, and he and MJ get back together.

Oh, yeah, Mysterio hallucinates some guy that isn’t Scarecrow in court and Peter gets a chance to earn his doctorate again, with his new teacher being… the Lizard!

Summary:

I love being right.

To start things off, I feel like I should talk about the Fresh Start Relaunch as a whole before talking about ASM specifically. On the whole, Fresh Start has been a great relaunch for Marvel; of all the titles released, there hasn’t been one that has gone absolutely bad. The absolute worst it’s gotten is with Doctor Strange, and that’s decent at worst. However, the pivot point would be Amazing Spider-Man; this was the make-or-break title for the relaunch, at least for me. And to have a writer who was coming off of a controversial event that made national headlines and trending on Facebook (y’know, all three people who use it) was a huge risk for people who hadn’t read the good parts of his bibliography. Some were skeptical, but people like me and Mark were hopeful that the man who wrote Superior Foes of Spider-Man would make a comeback.

Thankfully, the payoff was more than worth the risk.

I don’t know what I can say about Ryan Ottley that I didn’t say in the FCBD issue other than I welcome the change from Slott’s usual pool of artists. (Ramos aside.) Laura Martin, the colorist, does a stellar job of setting the tone of Ottley’s simpler pencils. If this were any other colorist, I wouldn’t have been sold on the art. Ottley and Rathman are an inseparable team at this point from their Invincible days, and have a sort of behind-the-scenes bond that very few art teams have. Granted, Peter and MJ look a bit too similar to Invincible and Atom Eve, but I suppose it’s fitting in a meta sense, given that Mark and Eve were based off of the former. (A criticism and a note that multiple people, Dark Mark included, have pointed out.)

Speaking of which, as a big fan of the Spider-marriage, it is good to see Spencer bring Peter and MJ back together as a couple and have it not feel like an instant bait-and-switch. Under Spencer’s pen, Peter and MJ have genuine chemistry, and banter between the two is very charming; the personal intimacy these two have is very pronounced. With that in mind, Spencer has clearly gone out of his way to appeal to fans of the marriage; he basically telegraphs to the audience that they mean a lot to each other. From recapping the Sensational Spider-Man annual to making a very deliberate focus on MJ’s ringless finger (Complete with Peter saying that there’s something missing in his life) Spencer is very clearly trying to curry favor with an audience that Slott and the Brain Trust deemed unimportant. While this could all be a massive red herring (I would drop the title out of sheer spite for this since Marvel can’t bother to commit) for now I’m willing to go along with it, because it could ultimately lead to the dissolution of One More Day. Spencer clearly knows what makes me happy. Not to mention that, aside from his “We won’t fix things with the cosmic cube” mess, Spencer tends to follow through with and conclude his plot points, as proved in Astonishing Ant-Man. (As opposed to Slott, who will tease something nice and then drop it.)

Aside from the marriage, this issue was just one big mix of fun and emotion, but it was smart enough to know when to play each tone. When it needed to be funny, the comedy took a priority, but when it needed to be serious, the comedy was kind of still around, but much dryer and secondary as opposed to cracking a joke at an inappropriate time. A bit of a weird segue, but this issue was actually really funny. I actually laughed out loud for a few jokes (“He’s my runner-up arch-nemesis at best.” “Oh no, not the respect of my peers!” “Bye Felicia.”) which was a rare occurrence through Slott’s run that only occurred maybe every few issues. To laugh more than once in a single issue was a welcome change, and didn’t detract away from the dramatic bits.

Now, some people are gonna say that I like watching Peter suffer, but having him kind of lose everything (Only to be picked back up by MJ) is kind of essential to making sure the last remnants of Slott’s run are destroyed and swept under the rug. I say this because Peter’s job loss is not one that Robbie takes lightly (Especially under the context that Robbie possibly does know Peter is Spider-Man) and rather than emphasizing “youth” as Tom Brevoort’s manifesto for OMD prescribed, Spencer has instead chosen to have Peter reflect on the theme of “responsibility”, and does not mince words on how badly Slott screwed up Peter’s foundations as a character: he got his life ruined by Doc Ock, he didn’t turn in his doctorate that he didn’t understand and, for anybody outside of his close friend group, is totally fake; let alone that he drove his company up into the ground and set himself up for a fall.

However, unlike Slott’s run, Spencer doesn’t mock Peter for screwing up; rather, he has the reader sympathize with him and how his life has been screwed over from all of these events and situation somewhat out of his control. Rather than have Aunt May just be disappointed for not having Peter pop out a grandkid, she has a legit reason to be disappointed in him, and as a student in college, this kind of thing hits home for me, and it’s a point where May actually has a point instead of just being condescending.

While making the reader sympathize with Peter, Spencer is also quickly getting rid of the majority of Slott’s plot points to set up his own status quo, which I am more than okay with. With all of the long-game subplots being established in either the FCBD issue (I.e. Boomerang as the roommate, which they smartly brushed aside to assume the reader knows this new status quo) or in the stingers, (The Lizard as Peter’s new doctoral professor) I’m actually feeling invested moving forward in the relaunch.

I do want to take a moment to discuss the villain and his defeat. For one, I’m glad that Mysterio is getting some much-needed love (He, along with Spot, are two of my favorite Spider-villains) and it’s glad to be reminded that when he’s got the whole smoke-and-shadows game up and enough money and supplies, he can become an Avengers-level threat. What makes it even betters that Peter uses his wit and own intelligence to defeat Mysterio as the last man standing, and saves the Avengers rather than the other way around. He also isn’t a schmuck when it comes to his street-level crimes; he has to play “lesser of two evils” with Boomerang getting away from Kingpin, and is keeping Boomerang close to him, so that he can figure out what he’s up to. It’s nice to see an intelligent Peter who takes pragmatic risks and has to play his cards smart.

It’s as Mark said, Spencer says he can write all these other characters and proves it, but chooses not to. It fits in line with Spencer’s fondness for the 70’s and 80’s Spider-Man, where Peter was a lot more stuck in his own corner of the universe and somewhat detached from the rest of the MU aside from the occasional line-wide crossover. The whole “heroes don’t trust Spider-Man” plot may be heartening back to a similar era: after an entire decade of constant crossovers, this is a refreshing change of pace.

Additionally, Mysterio seems to be part of a longer term chess game that Spencer has in store. With the hallucination of what Mark is guessing is Scarecrow (I personally think it is a demonic herald of Mephisto, or it could be an amalgam of the two.) we seem to be getting a resolution to Mysterio’s resurrection arc from Peter David’s Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man from all the way back from before One More Day. And given the demonic implications, there’s something clearly bigger and terrifying ahead. And whatever that is, I’m looking forward to it.

And I think that last sentence is indicative of the strength of Spencer’s opening salvo. “I’m looking forward to it.” When was the last time anybody at the Crawlspace said that about a Slott-written Spidey comic? For once, I’m excited for what’s to come, and with all the chess pieces set-up in this issue, there’s a ton of ways to go from here. (Not to mention how deliberately misleading the solicits were about the whole “New villains, new love interests” schlock that lead to a pleasant surprise with MJ.) If this is a representation of how good the majority of Spencer’s run will be, then by God, Marvel definitely has me on board. Superior Foes Spencer is back, and he proved it right here.

Final Grade: A