The Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 5 # 1 [July 2018]. Slott Departs; Spencer Steps In. [Spoilers]
Who else is getting tired of paying the big bucks for a #1 every time publishers decide a run is over? Thankfully, Ryan Ottley is the redeeming force, here.
Edit : This article was originally planned for release in July/August this year. As a result, my opinion has changed slightly.
Sure, Dan Slott had a pretty monumental ten year stint on The Amazing Spider-Man, and I understand why they wanted to finish with a $16.95 bang, but to have an over-sized number 1 is feeling tiresome. We are getting so many of them lately, as well – especially with all of the hoo-ha going on over at DC.
And you thought $16.95 was rich. A reprint of John Romita’s cover as a variant of the 2018 re-birth of The Amazing Spider-Man will set you back a king’s ransom.
“It’s really just cashing in, isn’t it?” says cynical me.
Enough complaining for the moment. It’s time to take a look at what Nick Spencer brings to the table.
Alien Invasion. Again.
I’m going to sound like a cranky old man for the rest of this article. I’ve never really been a huge fan of superheroes fighting epic battles (beyond my childhood) because they all seem to be solved (at least when Spidey’s involved) by gumming up something electrical with webs or incapacitating the bad guy in control of a big weapon so he can’t press the big red button. I am certainly getting to a point in my life where I’m appreciating a whole new genre of comics because of this. I didn’t think I’d lose interest in Spider-Man. At least not permanently.
So, yeah. The bad guys? Basically a horde of generic aliens that look a lot like spiders.
As it turns out, this whole sequence of attacks was a Mysterio ruse that somehow needed to be contained by everyone from Iron-Man to Old Man Logan. Holograms or robots that ooze life-like green blood? That was never explained. (Actually it was! "Practical effects and a union crew" -nm)
Read on for the details (if you could be bothered).
Spencer starts off by setting up the story with Peter’s conflict. Of course, he’s living in a rental, needs assistance to pay said rent and happens to be living with a super villain named “Boomerang”, a mercenary with a boomerang. This is starting to sound as lame as the Kangaroo was back in the nineties. What’s with the lame Australian-themed villains? While Boomerang (Fred Myers) pays rent, he’s not the model flat-mate. He’s up early playing video games preventing Pete from sleeping. Pete forgets he has an early morning ESU conference..
Here’s his reasoning:
- Fighting intergalactic, portal-jumping space bugs kept him busy while he feebly attempted to regain the friendship of Daredevil and Johnny Storm. Apparently, they have little respect for him.
Peter finally gets to the ESU conference (he’s the Bugle’s science editor in this reality, didn’t you know?).
Peter finds himself confronted with accusations of plagiarism during his college years after one of his papers is revealed to have been written by Otto Octavius (while he was the Superior Spider-Man).
Blast from the past; Exchange of consciousness.
The rest of the issue sees Peter raked over the coals.
Web-spinner or lie weaver?
The university labelled him a plagiariser, the media is calling him a fraud, Robbie Robertson has fired him and his Aunt May has virtually disowned him.
I understand why Robbie had to fire Peter. He damaged the credibility of the Bugle. Aunt May turning her back on Peter after all the times he’s literally saved her life [and the rest of the city] (literally two issues ago, from the Red Goblin)? This is a massive overreaction and hard to buy. C’mon, Mr. Spencer.
Is it time to point out the Octopus in the room?
Why would Otto Octavius, AKA Doctor Octopus complete all the work while his consciousness resided in Peter Parker and submit them under his own name (Otto Octavius)? Peter would be registered with the University. He would have had a photo ID and a unique number.
Otto would not have been a student of ESU, or at least not at the same time as Peter. Just. No.
As a reader, I’m now faced with two options. Suspend disbelief and somehow pretend that a non-registered student with a different face to his name would publish post graduate papers (and presumably attend lectures?) or further scrutinise the additional pages for glaring mistakes. You know me too well.
Peter throws himself into a portal risking his life (basically suicide) to save his city from the invasion of the bugs (that aren't even real).
For the smartest guy on campus, even Peter didn’t catch on to this plot hole and gave up on life. His guilt-tripping Aunt and the loss of his colleagues respect was all too much..
Paying full price for an issue of this quality is a bad decision.
Paying for an overpriced variant cover of this issue would make you certifiable. Having said that, if I am to maintain honesty, I was impressed by the penciling of Ryan Ottley whose work I have not been familiar with until now.
I’ll leave you with the Kingpin’s melon head and attack-mode Spidey to improve upon what was a fairly lack-lustre start to the fifth volume of Amazing Spider-Man.
In case you missed the cover of this article, it is my favourite piece of artwork in this issue. Well done, Ryan Ottley.
All the best,
Nick.
Acknowledgements
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All content is original and belongs to @nickmorphew. [27 October 2018]
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In a two part micro series, learn of the devious practical joke my uncles played on me as a child. You'll never think of Darth Vader the same way again.
Awesome review, I would have to agree with pretty much everything you said... I would double up on it being a greed thing.
I think this was probably a cram job to make stuff fit for the next several issues. I would tend to agree with @bryan-imhoff the plagiarism bit is a bit stretched, but plausible. I guess the way I'm looking at it, if you can buy that Doc Ock entered Pete's mind and wrote papers.... Is it a far stretch to think that a system could identify it as someone else's writing?
Hi there c&c,
Thanks for dropping by and the feedback. Hmm either way, whilever we have publishers creating content, it keeps these characters alive.
Absolutely.. I certainly give Bryan kudos for the effort he went to explain his thinking, even if I still don't quite accept the whole detecting "style of writing thing".
Take care!
Nick.
That's part of the beauty of comics, anime, and cartoons, they continually test our imaginations. It's funny how different two people interpretations and views can be, espically knowing that both very much enjoy the content.
Woohoo! A new comics review by @nickmorphew. I was missing these! I’ve been following the series so far, and overall enjoying it. I’m not very critical of most stuff, so I at least get satisfaction out of it on that “junk food” kinda level.
Ditto on giving props to Ottley’s art. I’m very aware of his work but didn’t follow Invincible which was his major Project to date. It’s just another series on my “someday” reading list!
Interestingly enough, I knew Ottley from the online message board Digital Webbing more than 15 years ago. Some of his earliest, or possibly even his first work is in the Digital Webbing Presents anthology where I also first published some work. I look up to him as a contemporary who worked his ass off and built a career... which I still plug away at all these years later!
Steem really reminds me of those message board days. It’s always resonated with me as a seeming second chance at the enthusiasm, relationships, learning, & opportunities I didn’t fully avail myself of back then.
I sort of find a bit of pleasure not liking things. Butt sniffing isn't really my thing.
My junk-food comics at the moment are Spongebob and Rick and Morty vs Dungeons and Dragons. This place is definitely another chance for making connections, especially when work and ideas are shared so freely. Facebook/Twitter etc just don't allow for this kind of work sharing.
I need to go back & re-read, but I think the plagiarism thing makes more sense than you’re thinking. Octavius was Peter, submitted papers as Peter, etc. The whole consciousness in Peter’s body thing. The university retroactively scanned papers using a new plagiarism machine learning A.I. kinda program that matched the writing style with papers previously published by Otto (in his scientific career pre Doc Ock) or somesuch. It wasn’t an exact match of a paper by Otto and didn’t require that Otto was ever a student at the University as well.
Still a stretch, but a lot of convoluted stuff had to happen to get Peter back to his “roots” and out of the tech CEO - Spidermobile era!
Hey Bryan!
Thanks so much for dropping in. It has been a very long time since I have written any reviews. I am extremely grateful for the effort you take to read the article AND give such a detailed responses. This may seem silly, but the more I write and build my skills, the more dependent I am on people validating my work (even if they disagree or point out I "Stuffed up" in my reasoning etc!).
Having thought about this again, it still doesn't seem to make sense. Why would Octavius plagiarise his own work under the name Peter Parker? Still doesn't make sense to me. Having a similar writing style doesn't necessarily mean he was plagiarising. I understand that if you write about ideas or newly created equations etc without referencing them, that would constitute plagiarising.
Although.. thinking out loud here - maybe Otto was writing as himself when he was writing those papers and assumed he didn't need to reference himself? But then again, he was registered as Peter Parker, so surely he knew he would have to reference Otto.. OR it was a diabolical plan from the get-go where Otto was setting up Peter for this exact moment?
Ideas?
Nick.
The key is to suspend disbelief and broaden the concept of plagiarism to include Marvel universe plagiarism! 😂 Again, not that it makes it great writing (although I found these kinda funny).
Peter didn’t get caught simply because Otto failed to properly annotate the bibliography! His paper was run through a system that is apparently sophisticated enough (Marvel style) to know if he’d been demonically possessed while writing it! The paper itself was wholly original, in Pete’s name, etc. but recognized as the work of Otto Octavius. The patterns of language and potentially even thought processes simply didn’t match Peter’s. As far as they’re concerned Pete potentially paid Otto to write his thesis for him.
So in this case it does come down to the equivalent of “having a similar writing style constituting plagiarism,” but on a whole other Marvelesque level!
This bizarre, geeky conversation is making me think of http://thelegalgeeks.com, a fun site that brings a bit of our real world expectations and procedures into the worlds of comics! 😆
I was trying to find a story I vaguely recall reading, with no success yet. It was a murder trial in the Marvel Universe and the lawyer used a defense strategy to imply that there was no way of knowing the victim was actually killed citing all the ways death is impermanent and identity is fleeting (shape changers, alternate realities, etc.) in the Marvel universe. Ingenious!
I like Spider-Man.
I upvoted your post.
Keep steeming for a better tomorrow.
@Acknowledgement - God Bless
Posted using https://Steeming.com condenser site.
Great review! Glad you're back, keep it up!
Hi Zoe.
Thanks so much for dropping by and I'm glad you're happy to see me back. It's been ages.. sometimes dragging ourselves back to the platform is the best thing we can do. I was pushing myself really hard and I think it was just unsustainable (at least at that time).
Let's hope I'm here more regularly again!
Hi nickmorphew,
Visit curiesteem.com or join the Curie Discord community to learn more.
hey just found you @nickmorphew - I feel like Marvel has way too much going on, and even the # variants and #s seem absurd. Haven't kept up with Spiderman but see there is some Spidergeddon event happening that seems overwhelming for the wallet. Looking forward to catching up on your work - cheers
Haha. Definitely overwhelming for the wallet.
You need a comixology subscription then! Much cheaper. You'll always have an idea of which books you want hard copies of anyway.
I'm really enjoying the walking dead in hard copy and appreciated kill or be killed and dry county in hare copy, too. Altho I still haven't read the last issue yet of korbk.. I can't bring myself to find out the answer to Dylan's demon... haha and its been on my shelf for months.
thanks for those - I need to expand my canon. How much money do you save on Comixology per issue? I have the unlimited, but they seem to start charging after a couple of issues of a run. thanks again!
Hey,
Can't remember savings per issue.. but apparently new issues are discounted at 10-15%. I use a third party website to preview comics I am interested in reading and if I liked what I saw, I'll usually buy the hard copy.
It is hard to help people decide on which new titles to check out because everyone's taste is so different. Take for instance, the discussion Bryan and I were having. He made some good points and was happy to suspend disbelief (I suppose that's fair when you're reading Spider-man lol)..but I wasn't able to reconcile with it entirely and that's why my review was sour.
Now, I'll link you to two articles I wrote a while back that might help you a little..
Dry County (No spoilers)
and
Kill or Be killed - but scroll down towards the end.
Enjoy the reading!
Nick.