Peter has been sent back to his home dimension on a one way trip to retrieve a specific tool from Reed Richards in hopes of restoring space and time and stopping The Emissary from reaching god-hood.
Cover by Romita, Jr., Hanna & MenyzWritten by Zeb Wells
Illustrated by John Romita, Jr.
Inked by Scott Hanna
Colored by Marcio Menyz
Lettered by VC’s Joe CaramagnaPeter and Mary Jane were sent to an alternate universe by Benjamin Rabin AKA The Emissary. In the midst of Rabin attempting to achieve god-hood using Spider-Man’s totem energy, MJ sent Peter back to their own universe attempting to save him over herself. While home, Peter realizes his reemergence nearly caused a nuclear explosion and that time moves a little funny in the other universe. While a week had passed there, less than a day had passed back home. After an unpleasant run-in with Captain America, Peter decides to turn to one of his oldest foes for assistance – Norman Osborn. Knowing Norman is one of the few people that could help him, Peter swings over to the Baxter Building to “borrow” a particular item from one Reed Richards.
Wells’s run on “The Amazing Spider-Man” thus far has been a somewhat controversial one. He’s purposefully flipping expectations, but for the most part, it feels like he is doing so just to do it, rather than it actually making for a compelling story. With issue #24, even subverting expectations has essentially no effect on this bridging part of the story. With Peter sneaking into the Baxter Building to steal a mini fusion reactor to assist Norman Osborn in finding a way to send him back to the other Earth to rescue MJ, Wells does his best at writing classic wit and zingers between Spidey and the Fantastic Four, and it mostly works. It is all comfortable and familiar. It is equal parts fun and annoying to see Spider-Man and the FF duke it out in a modern comic. It’s a mildly fun callback to their first-ever meeting, but it’s frustrating that Peter is acting like he can’t say what he needs it for. Even if Reed were to reply with hesitation over letting him borrow the reactor, and time is of the essence, it still feels like the hero isn’t telling his allies anything just to forward the conflict rather than attempt to shift it to a more satisfying track.
And because this comic is more or less a bridging issue within the story, it both feels like a whole lot of something, and a whole lot of nothing happens. The opening with Spidey and the FF is fully enjoyable from a callback view, and the script feels right. The aggravation that the FF team feels for Peter in that moment, is pretty much how most readers are probably feeling at this point. The issue then shifts to Peter and Norman experimenting on the suit to send Peter back. There’s conflict and tension between the two, understandably, and then Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan shows up confused and angry about Norman doing secret work in a NJ warehouse. She of course misses that Peter was just there before his jump through space and time so she is both knows more and less than other characters. Her appearance is, of course, to set up where Norman’s story will go next, but it feels crammed into this issue with no payoff. Between that and what comes next, this issue moves at an insane pace where we jump back to The Emissary’s latest scheme. Unfortunately time has moved a little too fast in this other dimension and Peter has missed quite a bit and things don’t look good for him and MJ.
John Romita, Jr. has never been an artist whose name gets me all that excited. His work always looks the same and he’s seemingly had no growth in all his time working on comics. In fact much of his style or talent seems to be moving backwards. His simplistic, blocky style does this story no favors. Somehow the inks and colors by Scott Hanna and Marcio Menyz, respectively, make his work even flatter.
This issue is a perfect example with the weaknesses of a Big Two main title. There’s is such a huge need to continuously pump out content and keep these stories constantly going that you end up with an incredible amount of empty, mindless fantasy nonsense masquerading as emotional or even heavy sci-fi. It isn’t offensively bad, but it does nothing to strengthen the character’s or the series’s integrity. Marvel still pumps out fantastic work, but when books like this are hitting the shelves you are startled into being reminded that they occasionally feel like a conveyer belt production that just dumps out passable books.
Final Verdict: 4.0, A surprisingly hollow issue for how important it tries to make the main storyline seem.
