Alford Notes: Amazing Spider-Man #33/834

Silver Sable just shot Spider-Man, so is this the end for our favorite wall crawler?  If so, never fear, Miguel is also here.  Can he get back to the future, save the timeline, or whatever else it is that he does? Find out as we dive into ASM #33

 

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Story Title:  Point Blank

Writer: Nick Spencer

Artist: Patrick Gleason

Colorist: Matthew Wilson

Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramanga

Cover Artist:  Patrick Gleason and Matthew Wilson

Asst. Editor: Kathleen Wisneki

Editor: Nick Lowe

Published: November 6, 2019

 

Remedial ASM 101

Peter Parker is back in school and has made some friends met some people who accept him for who he is has joined in with a group of students forced to take him in by the professor.  However, His sister Theresa has jeopardized his education by pulling him into yet another S.H.I.E.L.D. event against the Foreigner and the Chameleon.  Unfortunately, Spidey got shot by Silver Sable.  Oh yeah, Spider-Man 2099 fell from the sky and landed on an oil platform run by former Captain Planet villains.

The Story – Pay Attention, This Will Be on the Test

Miguel can barely keep it together due to time displacement, but has enough sense to beat up Thug 1 and Thug 2 and runs off to find Peter Parker.  Peter, meanwhile is facing down the barrel of Sable’s rifle.  Theresa blows her head off to reveal it is a LMD.  She is dying and needs the infinity formula to stay alive just long enough to try and win back her country from the grips of the Countessa, who still holds sway and is in current dealings with the Chameleon.  Peter eventually makes his way back to school where his group partner uses him to show off his new future detector – a device that can fairly accurately predict the future by searching through the multiverse for a world like ours, but operating ahead of us in time.  Thankfully, there is absolutely no way possible for that to go wrong.  Too bad the future detector did not register The Hitman, hired by Chameleon, who is about to assassinate (supposedly) Dr. Doom at the UN.

What Passed and Failed

While I’ll take points off here and there for a few things I didn’t care for and add a few points for others, all in all, this issue is rather devoid of WOW! or ARRGGH! material.

OOTI (Onomatopoeia of the Issue)

On a scale of 1 (POW) to 10 (BLRKBQRKPQRBLNB), BLAM rates a 1.  Not even an exclamation point.  So sad.

 

Analysis

So Nick Spenser continues to ignore the tie-in blues by giving only a couple of pages to that arc and focusing the rest of the time on his own story line(s).  I’m not feeling the Theresa Parker/Silver Sable/Foreigner story, so that left me largely ho hum about this issue.  I’m not irritated that Spenser is going in this direction, but it is not an arc I wish to read and will be glad when we move on to the next one.  We still have three more issues of this tie-in so eventually I guess he will have to have Miguel meet up with Spidey.

As far as the Hitman goes, it appears he is there is assassinate Dr. Doom, but he could easily just be using his sniper rifle scope to see better.  I don’t know what Chameleon’s plan is and sadly I am not excited about trying to predicting it.  My biggest interest in this scene is how in the world is Hitman able to be on that roof with a rifle around the UN with no security noticing it? Yeah, yeah, he’s good, but all those world diplomats and nobody sees the guy in bright yellow standing on the roof with a rifle?

Speaking of the Hitman, just who is this guy?  Well, it could be one of four people:

1. Burt Kenyon – Burt is the original Hitman. His first appearance is in Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man #4 where he takes a contract to kill Spider-Man (spoiler alert – he failed). Turns out he is a friend of Frank Castle, but instead of using his murder skill set to take out the criminal underworld, he instead hires out to the highest bidder.  Later, in Amazing Spider-Man #5, he takes a contract to kill Jolly J.J.J., but falls to his death from the Statue of Liberty. You would think that a little thing like death would rule him out as a potential character in this issue, but during Dead No More, Ben “The Jackal” Reilly brought old Burt back to life and it is uncertain if he survived that ordeal.  With his original being in the Spider-Man comics, Crawlspace odds on Burt Kenyon being our guy is 70%
2. Jimmy Pierce – This guy resisted a life of crime to serve in the army, but later got pulled into mix despite his best efforts. He is completely a Punisher character and has no association with Spider-Man. He survives his time in the Punisher books and goes on his own way.  Crawlspace odds pegs him at being our guy at 5%.
3. Unnamed Guy – Roderick Kingsley sold the Hitman name and gear to some nobody who used it to work for the Goblin King. That didn’t work out well and we see him hanging with the other losers at the Bar with No Name. He eventually returns to Kingsley in Spider-Woman. He does have connections with Spider-Man, so Crawlspace odds are at 20% for him.
4. New Guy – This could be someone completely new either unknown to us or a character we have run into before, like say… Lonesome Pincus! Crawlspace odds for it being a new guy is 5% unless that new guy is Lonesome Pincus – that would be 100%.

Extra Credit

Bonus points to anyone picking up the 2099 event issues and letting me know how it is.

Final Grade

This is not a bad issue, I’m just not a fan S.H.I.E.L.D. level stories.  Spencer has given me plenty of New York level stories, so I won’t begrudge to occasional deviation.

C

 

Your Turn

What grade do YOU give it?

 

What’s Next?

 

 

Nick Lowe has asked people to let the Spider office know how they are doing by sending an email to spideyoffice@marvel.com and to make sure you mark it “OK to print”.  If you get published, make sure to draw our attention to it!

 

 

 

‘Nuff Said!