Release Date: April 2008
Cost: $3 per issue
Normally I would only review a single issue at one time, but since Marvel has decided to publish ASM an abnormal three times monthly it makes more sense to talk about all three issues as a complete story.
I'll give a quick recap for those who might not be familiar with the current publishing cycle of Amazing Spider-man: ASM has always been the best selling of the Spider-man titles and the most important storyline-wise. So it must have made sense to Marvel to cancel every other Spider-man title and publish 3 times the number of ASM books, with all 3 issues making up a self-contained story. To complicate matters further the title has no consistent creative team as writers, inkers, and pencillers change every month. This wouldn't be a huge problem except for the fact that each creative team has control over every new character that they create. Thus, some interesting characters introduced six issues ago have not been seen or heard from for two months. This makes any storyline seem disjointed, and each set of 3 issues doesn't seem to connect to the previous or subsequent story arc.
All of this might make it seem that I am unimpressed with ASM right now, but that isn't exactly true. The Brand New Day concept isn't bad. The past 2 years of Amazing Spider-man storylines have mostly dealt with plotlines outside of the Spider-man universe. Major Marvel events like Civil War have dominated the Spidey landscape taking the character too far from the tried and tested status quo. To correct this, Marvel brought in a deus ex machina and erased the events of the last several years from Spidey's timeline. Now I am not a fan of timeline changes; writing should never be so ridiculous that it has to be fixed by magically erasing the past, but something really had to done.
After this "correction", all ASM stories have been published under the "Brand New Day" moniker. They make an attempt to return Spider-man to the status quo.
This brings us to issues #555-557. These issues quite nicely point out the current problem with Amazing Spider-man. Even though there is three times the comic every month, there isn't three times the story.
Our tale begins with Spider-man and Wolverine talking about breakfast cereal. Riveting stuff. Dr. Strange sends them on a mission and the duo end up saving a professor from Mayan warriors. Oh and there is a blizzard. The subsequent issues deal with the extreme cold, more Mayan warriors, a death deity, and the required plot twist/double cross. Despite all of this the story falls flat. The issues do nothing to advance Spider-man's personal storyline and are completely forgettable. I also have very little faith that Mayan Death Deity will become a re-occurring villain.
I find it ironic that the move to publish ASM three times monthly was done in part to emphasize the importance of title, but they have decided to focus on storylines that might not have made the cut for Web of Spider-man 15 years ago.
All in all the story will take you about 45 minutes to read. At $3 an issue that is about $12 dollars an hour worth of entertainment. For the Spider-man fanatic this will be a must have, but anyone else should pass these issues by.
I can only hope that next month brings a better story or Brand New Day will be another failed concept in Spidey publication history. Clone saga anyone?
I'll give a quick recap for those who might not be familiar with the current publishing cycle of Amazing Spider-man: ASM has always been the best selling of the Spider-man titles and the most important storyline-wise. So it must have made sense to Marvel to cancel every other Spider-man title and publish 3 times the number of ASM books, with all 3 issues making up a self-contained story. To complicate matters further the title has no consistent creative team as writers, inkers, and pencillers change every month. This wouldn't be a huge problem except for the fact that each creative team has control over every new character that they create. Thus, some interesting characters introduced six issues ago have not been seen or heard from for two months. This makes any storyline seem disjointed, and each set of 3 issues doesn't seem to connect to the previous or subsequent story arc.
All of this might make it seem that I am unimpressed with ASM right now, but that isn't exactly true. The Brand New Day concept isn't bad. The past 2 years of Amazing Spider-man storylines have mostly dealt with plotlines outside of the Spider-man universe. Major Marvel events like Civil War have dominated the Spidey landscape taking the character too far from the tried and tested status quo. To correct this, Marvel brought in a deus ex machina and erased the events of the last several years from Spidey's timeline. Now I am not a fan of timeline changes; writing should never be so ridiculous that it has to be fixed by magically erasing the past, but something really had to done.
After this "correction", all ASM stories have been published under the "Brand New Day" moniker. They make an attempt to return Spider-man to the status quo.
This brings us to issues #555-557. These issues quite nicely point out the current problem with Amazing Spider-man. Even though there is three times the comic every month, there isn't three times the story.
Our tale begins with Spider-man and Wolverine talking about breakfast cereal. Riveting stuff. Dr. Strange sends them on a mission and the duo end up saving a professor from Mayan warriors. Oh and there is a blizzard. The subsequent issues deal with the extreme cold, more Mayan warriors, a death deity, and the required plot twist/double cross. Despite all of this the story falls flat. The issues do nothing to advance Spider-man's personal storyline and are completely forgettable. I also have very little faith that Mayan Death Deity will become a re-occurring villain.
I find it ironic that the move to publish ASM three times monthly was done in part to emphasize the importance of title, but they have decided to focus on storylines that might not have made the cut for Web of Spider-man 15 years ago.
All in all the story will take you about 45 minutes to read. At $3 an issue that is about $12 dollars an hour worth of entertainment. For the Spider-man fanatic this will be a must have, but anyone else should pass these issues by.
I can only hope that next month brings a better story or Brand New Day will be another failed concept in Spidey publication history. Clone saga anyone?
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