AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #618 REVIEW

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #618

Writer: Dan Slott

Penciler: Marcos Martin

Inker: Marcos Martin

Story Title: Mysterioso Part 1: Murder Un-Incorporated

Plot

Death in the Mafia Family. Spider-Man helps the bad guys. May and Jay return. Aunt May’s awful discovery. Return of the villain. Back from the dead. May’s attitude changes.

The Commentary

Here’s the great thing about Spider-Man; he’s a versatile character. You can do slam bang super-hero stories with him and it works. You can also do more street level, crime stories with him and it still works even with his powers and abilities. I like the crime dramas or at least the crime dramas I’ve read.

The thing is I really wasn’t wowed by Slott bringing back the street level characters to this title. Plotting wise this issue was pretty tight. There was a large cast of characters and Slott kept it all together and managed to throw in a few curve balls here and there that I wasn’t really expecting. I didn’t like them necessarily but on an overall story level it was solid.

The main problem and where I start disliking the issue and quite possibly the story is that while there are all these neat elements I don’t really care about them. Nothing in the writing grabbed me as a reader and the introduction of Mysterio was very dull and uninteresting. It’s kind of neat that he faked the deaths of all of these mafia guys but it just wasn’t as exciting and I think it was meant to be. I realize that this is the first chapter of a story arc but I didn’t really care for it.

And then there’s Aunt May’s role in the story. I am pretty much sick of seeing Aunt May looking at Peter as if he was a moronic nine year-old. The whole Peter driving thing with May and Jay being scared in the backseat was not funny at all and just annoyed the crap out of me. Then again outside of Brian Michael Bendis, JMS and J.M. DeMatteis’ handling of the character I have consistently hated Aunt May throughout Spider-Man’s history. The fact that she was taken over by Mr. Negative and told Peter off was also rather annoying and I am going to make the prediction that it really won’t go anywhere and will continue to annoy me as long as the sub-plot continues.

Parting Thoughts

Between the general direction of the story and the art I wasn’t very impressed with this issue. This story has some potential and I did like seeing the return of Silvermane and Hammerhead but everything else just left me cold. Slott has proven to be a good writer, just not on this issue.

2 out of 5 webheads.