Once upon a time, Little Edward was walking around town looking at the yard sales, when he saw a guy selling comic books, what he found was a Trade Paperback at an affordable price, The Amazing Spider-Man: Coming Home, by J. Michael Straczynski and John Romita Jr. I had to talk about myself in the third person.
Well, it's one year later, and I am looking for a comic mini-series or storyline to review, and I remember that I own this comic. Neato. Welcome to the big review series of 2025. I'm gonna be looking at The Amazing Spider-Man issues 30-35, from when the series relaunched in 1999.
Let me give you a little background. Spider-Man was created in 1962 by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko for Amazing Fantasy #15. Cool. Spidey then got his new comic series titled "The Amazing Spider-Man" and it was a huge hit. Cool. flash forward to the 90's and Spidey's dealing with clones and a lot of confusing mumbo jumbo. Not cool. and to top it all off, Marvel has gone bankrupt... HOW ARE THEY GONNA GET OUT OF THIS ONE? I don't know.
Well, the Spidey comics aren't selling well, Marvel is worried about people not buying their comics after seeing a big 441 in the cover of ASM, so they decide to just stop and relaunch the series... And we're off to a rocky start because reviews of issues 1 to 29 are mixed. People are incredibly negative about the Howard Mackie run of Amazing Spider-Man, and to be honest, I kinda like his work on Peter Parker: Spider-Man, but I have not read enough of his run on ASM, but I've heard people say it's either really bad or really weird.
You think things are bad now... Well, they are, but they were probably worse in the late 90's, I wouldn't be able to tell you, I've read very little from this era of Spider-Man comics, yes, that's right, the guy that talks about Spider-Man on his website has NOT read everything.
Somewhere around 2000, Mackie was booted from Peter Parker: Spider-Man and after that, in June 2001, he was also booted from Amazing Spider-Man, poor guy, if I was a writer for a Spider-Man comic, I would not let go... Unless they told me I was writing ANOTHER Spider-Man title. Well, Mackie was replaced with J. Michael Straczynski, who is known for writing Babylon 5, Superman, and he had a cameo in Thor (2011). His run on Spider-Man is very famous, and very critically acclaimed because he takes the character to places that we've never seen him in before... Which is the thing EVERY Spider-Man writer says before making a bad comic. I should know, I wrote Evil Spider-Man.
Wow, Spider-Man fans had it so good in the early 2000's, they had a good Amazing Spider-Man series, a good Ultimate Spider-Man series (We'll be reviewing that soon), and they had movies, games, Spider-Man was GOOD, what do we have now? PS5 game with mixed reviews? Possibly the worst run in Spider-Man history? Movies that really divide the fanbase? Idiot fans? Pfft.
JMS decided to begin this new Spider-Man run in a big way, with a big 6-issue story. Let's look at this through the eyes of Little Edward... It was 2023 when I read this.
Well, here is the cover for issue 30 of The Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 2). Drawn by J. Scott Campbell.
Before we talk about the cover, Dear Marvel, I AM PRAYING THAT YOU FIX THAT GOD-AWFUL SEARCH ENGINE ON YOUR WEBSITE. And what's up with the Spidey in the corner? Why is he so low-res? Everything on the cover is fairly high quality except for the corner box... Or corner circle? Didn't Marvel have a physical copy in their archives to scan so they could put the image on their website?
The cover here depicts Spider-Man after webbing up some criminals, but that guy still has his gun! Shouldn't you take it away from him or something? Also, that's a black widow spider, you should like kill it before it kills someone.
Believe it or not, the Spider-Man comic begins with... Spider-Man, he's suiting up while listening to a voicemail from Aunt May. And we also get that classic Spidey narration. One Spidey artist that always seems to come back to the title is John Romita Jr. Folks have mixed feelings regarding his work, but I think it's fantastic. I find it pretty nostalgic, since the very first comic I ever owned was penciled by him. His work on this story, though... It is just perfect.
Well, Spidey is swinging through New York City, and he has a web-backpack, isn't that cute? He didn't have it in the last page. Spidey's really cheesed because his life hasn't been going well since... I don't know, I didn't read the other 19 issues. But instead of telling us about his life, he decides to tell us about pockets. Pete's a normal person. He enters this building that is scheduled for demolition and really goes to town on it. This is how I found out that people said "I made a funny" in 2001, and it wasn't just a thing from the late 2010's.
Pete decides to visit his old high school, and he finds that things haven't really changed, this kid is getting bullied, and Peter decides to step in. But they're only gonna bully him HARDER next time, so... Good job, Peter. The kid has to learn how to fight his own battles.
After that, Spidey's just doing Spidey things, fighting bad guys and meeting old people that can also stick to walls... What? Well, this is where we meet Ezekiel Sims, who is implied to be a Peter from the future, he kinda looks like him, he can stick to walls, he doesn't set off the Spider-Sense and he knows Peter's name. This guy must be a philosopher or something because he keeps asking questions that are hard to answer. Apparently, Peter does not comprehend the powers he has, but can Ezekiel stop losing his shoes? Shoes aren't exactly cheap, you know.
How DID Peter get his power? Did the radiation enable the spider to give him powers? Was the spider trying to give him the powers before the radiation killed it? The chicken or the egg or the power? And those are good questions, but Spidey was in his 20's when this comic came out, the spider was long gone*, he's had the powers for years, does it really even matter at this point? Maybe. Ezekiel's already gone before Peter can even try to think about it.
*Well, it came back but that's a story for another day.
We cut to... Somewhere, there's a guy, talking to another guy about business stuff. This guy (His name is Dex) goes into a boat and talks to... Morlun, who is about to kill some guy... I'm sure he's fine, anyway, the issue's over, and Morlun's about to go looking for Spider-Man.
First issue in the storyline and it is already better than the entirety of Gwenpool Strikes Back.
This review would be pretty lame if I looked at only one issue, so I'm gonna look at chapter 2, from The Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 2) #31. Made by the same people.
I don't know why Marvel felt the need to change the cover so they could use it on their website, but it's fine. It's still the same cover, Peter Parker is teaching science to high school kids, but those little rascals are unaware that Peter Parker is the Batman- I mean Spider-Man. This is actually kind of a big spoiler.
Peter is eating breakfast at Aunt May's house, and Peter decides to have a flashback while there's someone talking to him, how inconsiderate. After that, there's a meeting, Ezekiel is the owner of a big company that specializes in...
So, after that, Spider-Man is swinging, and Morlun spots him, which causes Peter's Spider-Sense to go crazy. That is how we know that this guy's up to no good. So, after that scene, Peter's looking for the work experience teaching credential, but the receptionist here is one of those spider haters. Don't blame her.
Spider-Sense again, there is a gunman in here. But Peter's gonna do everything in his power to make sure everyone's safe. He gets Joey (The kid that was getting bullied in the last issue) to make a distraction in the form of smoke. Peter changes into his Spider-Man uniform and manages to stop the gunman from hurting anyone. The gun man turns out to be one of the students, who was also a bullying victim, who couldn't take the abuse of his classmates anymore and decided to actually do something horrible.
One of the teachers decides to quit. The final page reveals to us that Peter Parker is the new science teacher at Midtown High. Man, I wish Spider-Man was my teacher so that I could fail on all of his exams.
Well, those first two issues were pretty good, they had good action, good art, good storytelling, good everything. This is everything I ever wanted from a Spider-Man comic. But the story will continue on The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 2) #32.
ISSUE 30: 8/10.
ISSUE 31: 8/10.
Yeah.
Well, that's it for this one, I'll see you on the next one.
NEXT: I don't know.
Comments
Post a Comment