Amazing Spider-Man #51-#63 and Annual #3 & #4

Been continuing my binge reading of Spidey. Not too much to comment on, liked the Kingpin stories, you really get a sense of how unprepared Peter is when dealing with him. #59-#61 were standouts with Fisk raiding Osborn's scientific equipment to create a hypnosis machine that would cause certain people to blindly follow his orders. A lot of people cite Marvel's extreme sense of camp during their Silver Age years as being outright bad, but these three issues kind of balance it between pure farce and seriousness pretty well to the point where it makes Adam West's Batman look like chump change. #62 is like that too with Medusa coming to New York to get a gauge on human reaction but somehow getting swept up in a coupe by a Shampoo company executive who wants her and Spidey to fight purely so that he can sell more product

Continuing my re-read of J. Michael Straczynski's run on Amazing Spider-Man, with issues #506 through to #508…




This three-part arc is titled "The Book of Ezekiel" and serves to finish up the on-going "Spider Totem" storyline.

Ezekiel reappears in New York to warn Peter that the big bad totemic mystical monster thing – referred to as "The Gatekeeper" – which he warned him about previously is now on its way to kill Peter. He tells Peter that his only hope is to travel with him to a South American temple dedicated to the worship of the spider god.

Meanwhile, New York City is being overrun by billions of spiders all led by the Gatekeeper. Peter fights the monster but is quickly overwhelmed and rendered unconscious. While passed out, Peter has a fever dream in which the Gatekeeper tells him that he was chosen to receive his spider powers by mystical forces, and that Ezekiel is a pretender who 'stole' the power through a magical ceremony. The Gatekeeper shows Peter that Ezekiel knows that the mystical totemic spider god is in fact coming for him and that he needs to divert the god towards Peter to ensure his own survival.

Once in South America, Peter awakes to find himself chained to an alter within the temple. A knife-wielding Ezekiel proceeds to cut both his and Peters flesh, allowing their blood to mix on the alter and invoke the spider god, who appears as a huge arachnid and attacks the restrained Peter. At the last moment, Ezekiel realises that he has only sought wealth and power in his own life, while Peter has dedicated his time to helping others. Ezekiel decides to sacrifice himself to save Spidey, which of course he does, though he is killed in the process.


For the most part, this was an enjoyable conclusion to the Spider Totem story. I know there are those in the forum who dislike the whole Spider Totem concept, but in the final analysis, I think it was an interesting idea – not least because, let's face it, some of Peter's so-called "spider powers" aren't particularly spider-like at all. His "spider sense" for example! As Ezekiel points out, Peter's ability to sense danger to the point where it can be blocks away from him at the time...or even more nebulously that it can be triggered by events that haven't even occurred yet...seems much closer to precognition or telepathy than any ability that real spiders have. Ultimately though, I like that Straczynski very much kept it vague and left things open to reader interpretation, rather than actually going ahead and changing a fundamental aspect of Peter's origin story.

Myself, I choose not to believe in the Spider Totem aspect of Peter's origin because I think it runs completely counter to the idea that Peter is an everyman and what happened to him when he got bitten by the radioactive spider could've happened to any one of us. But I do like the fact that, that as a reader of Straczynski's run, you can basically believe what you want to believe. It's also pretty clear, by the way, that Peter himself doesn't believe a word of this Spider Totem nonsense!

Straczynski also returns to the sub-plot about Mary Jane's desire to become a serious actor. She attends an audition for an off-Broadway play, during which the casting director is pretty mean and dismissive of her, once again knocking her confidence.

All in all, this was a well-constructed story, with nice pacing. The big reveal about Ezekiel's true intentions was a really good one and I remember that it took me completely by surprise back in 2004.

That said, something about the climax in issue #508 felt a bit rushed or, I dunno…"lazy". In particular, Ezekiel's sudden about-face decision to save Peter and sacrifice himself just didn't ring true for me. Why would Ezekiel go to all that trouble to get Peter where he wants him to save himself and then, at the last moment, change his plan because he realises that Peter is more noble and self-sacrificing than he is? He's spent a lot of time with Spider-Man over the past few months, so that shouldn't really be a surprise to him! Don't get me wrong, as a conclusion to the storyline it works fine, I guess, but somehow I just don't really believe this character would act like that.

Anyway, this was definitely a more enjoyable and satisfying read than some of the other recent JMS issues.

I feel like a good amount of the first couple years they were kinda silly.. but it seems like Kirby really raised the bar and when into full crazy creativity mode around that point. Vol. 3 of the Epic collection cuts of at 'This Man, This Monster', which is the first one that really feels like great writing instead of just amazing new concepts and characters sort of tossed together with basic plots and Marvel Science.

Been trying to get through the Silver Surfer 90s series since I have always been intrigued by this character. But sadly I have to say that besides the Infinity Gauntlet tie-in issues, most of his solo stories are just bland and fairly crappy. It's almost like the character is too damn powerful and the only way they can give him any kind of conflict is by having him have hallucinations (or just make him fight his "evil" self, like in this issue) , I swear that happens 3 or 4 times within a span of 20 issues or so. None of the villains he goes up against were memorable, in fact, a lot them doesn't even make sense, like the Midnight Sun character who has plates as hands or something? But then I found out he was originally a Shang-Chi villain, so how the hell is he surviving in outer space fighting Silver Surfer? Whatever....but I'm a bit surprised that Ron Marz was writing this since I loved his Green Lantern stuff, it feels like he's phoning it in here and not really caring about the character at all.

I enjoyed the Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers run and the Starlin run a lot. Never read the Marz run. I'm surprised by how long it was. Personally, I thought it was one of the best Marvel books around circa 1990. 

He's nothing like Thor. That was a great run. I dropped off when Ron Lim left.