Amazing Spider-Man 55 (Spoilers)

[Immortal Hulk]

What a waste of time and money...

[king81992]

We know Kindred's identity and some of his motivation, but have no idea how he got like this, though its implied OMD has something to do with it.

I expect a Spiderman and Kindred vs Green Goblin and possibly Kingpin in the future.

[Wall-Crawler]

One of the best (if not the best) issues out of the entirety of Nick Spencer's run, I was at the edge of my seat the entire time.

[evolutionaryFan]

I mentioned a while back that I wasn't a fan of mystery box story telling and this is exactly why. lol

Yeah, I mean if the payoff works well and good... otherwise you feel like you wasted a lot of time. But the longer you stretch it out, the better you expect the payoff to be... so the more likely you will be disappointed.

[Wall-Crawler]

I'm pretty sure MJ doesn't remember the deal, it was ambigous enough that she could or could not remember, her very first sentence where she said "He doesn't remember" made my heart skip a beat and think she has known all along, but then she continued on saying that Peter is very angry and would say anything to save them if he knew what Harry wanted, implying MJ is simply telling Harry that whatever it is, Peter (and herself) doesn't remember or else he would have spoken already.

[Wall-Crawler]

Also, it's pretty silly complaining about the pacing, I get it, it's frustrating having to wait so long to get answers, but that's due to the format of comic books, their releases of once or twice a month, because the actual pacing of the story has been phenomenal, once we get to read this in trade it will be 100x better, and it is already great as it is.

[PCN24454]

I guess we can confirm that Harry was brainwashed, and that's the reason why his motivations for hating Peter were so weak.

[TheCape]

Wasn't as bad as i expected actually, it sucks that Spencer is still doing the slowburn, but it did have some nice moments.

I didn't expect Harry to call out Peter for letting Norman go twice, but is actually the only legitimate point he made and did like MJ talk with Harry.

Still, i don't blame anyone that is dissapointed with the arc, it really didn't live up to the hype.

[Frontier]

I hope MJ has enough time to stick around the book and finally explain to Peter about the Mysterio thing (we may never find out what happened in Montana).

[PCN24454]

So what you are describing is every Spider-Man story-arc since BND because of the decision to publish Spider-Man twice a month (which means more padding by default).

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This does not deserves a mic drop. This has supposedly been the Main Story arc since the beginning of Spencer's run and it's been nothing but padding. He could've at least had shorter issues in between, but nope; it's been decompressed story after decompressed story after decompressed story. We barely even got introduced to any new characters, and even the new characters are just rewritten versions of old ones.

[WebSlingWonder]

I have to ask, when was the last time that happened? I don't mean that rudely, understand. Just genuinely got to ask.

I really don't think it's possible to do universally liked and consensually loved Spider-Man stories anymore, certainly not in 616. When was the last time you had a title or story or run that did that?

Before you had BND, then you had Slott...and was that really "solid Spider-Man stories" that everyone liked and had no complaints about? Fact is that nobody's perfect, and even a good writer can stumble and make mistakes. A new writer who comes to Spider-Man especially if they sign up for a long run, aren't likely to avoid the problems and issues that come with Spider-Man being 2 times a month and finding some way to work with OMD and so on and delivering event storylines every now and again.

I guess for me, the last time I felt genuine excitement reading a Spider-Man book was the early issues of Spencer's run. I can give him credit for delivering solid stories of the character in the first year of his tenure, but he's really lost his stride since "2099" IMO. Putting stories into the background saying "they'll pay off later" while not giving resolutions to "Last Remains" and "Sins Rising" is a huge misstep. This current story has been going on since ASM #44. Let that sink in: Peter has been going back and forth between Sin-Eater and Kindred for over ten whole issues. That's a long time for a bi-weekly book. Take into account that these stories are also decompressed, so they could technically happen in fewer issues.

What I'm trying to say is that yes, every writer has mistakes, and maybe I rushed to judgment of requesting a new writer. That isn't usually what I request, and I'm sure Mr. Spencer is an awesome writer. I just think he needs to find his footing again and redeliver quality normal Spider-Man stories before going all in on event stories for two arcs in a row. I'm grateful that the next arc will (seemingly) do that with Peter getting his new suit and battling against Mr. Negative and Kingpin, so I'm excited about that. But this story has been a mess with very little to offer for me. As much as I want OMD addressed and reversed, I wasn't clamoring for it like everyone else: I just wanted a good Spider-Man story.

One thing that is constructive I hope Mr. Spencer does is give us a single-issue breather more often. So far, we've only had two: "Arrivals/Destinations" from issue #29 and "Time and Time Again" from #37. The latter was even more interesting with the Clairvoyant, which Pete hasn't used since then (how did he not use it to figure out Sin-Eater and Kindred's plan? How did he not use it to figure out most of the book going forward?).

I just wish the book was 18 issues a year instead of 24: that way, we could get more of these breather issues and focus purely on the characters as characters.

[blackspidey2099]

I really enjoyed this issue on it's own, but it didn't really do much to address the flaws of the whole Last Remains story as a complete arc. Hopefully next issue is a proper conclusion, but as of right now, I have no idea why I sat through 10 issues of story that could have been told in 3 at most.

[Vortex85]

This does not deserves a mic drop. This has supposedly been the Main Story arc since the beginning of Spencer's run and it's been nothing but padding. He could've at least had shorter issues in between, but nope; it's been decompressed story after decompressed story after decompressed story. We barely even got introduced to any new characters, and even the new characters are just rewritten versions of old ones.

I'm going to disagree with this, below are all legitemate Spider-Man stories that work without any Kindred hints, despite those little teases being dropped in there:

"Back to Basics" was a Peter Parker arc.
"Trivial Pursuit" was a Boomerang arc.
"Heist" was Black Cat, Thieves Guild arc.
"Lifetime Achievement was a JJJ arc.
"Family Matters" was an Aunt May arc.
"Hunted" was a Kraven arc.
"Who run the world" was a Sinister Syndicate arc.
2099 was a Chameleon / Doom arc.
etc

All of these arc could have worked as normal Spider-Man story telling without any hints or dropping of Kindred. The fact that Spencer did tease Kindred does not invalidate these as padding.

Last Remains is not what those were leading to, is is simply the first arc that focusing on Kindred instead of something else.

[TheCape]

I'm going to disagree with this, below are all legitemate Spider-Man stories that work without any Kindred hints, despite those little teases being dropped in there:

"Back to Basics" was a Peter Parker arc.
"Trivial Pursuit" was a Boomerang arc.
"Heist" was Black Cat, Thieves Guild arc.
"Lifetime Achievement was a JJJ arc.
"Family Matters" was an Aunt May arc.
"Hunted" was a Kraven arc.
"Who run the world" was a Sinister Syndicate arc.
2099 was a Chameleon / Doom arc.

All of these arc could have worked as normal Spider-Man story telling without any hints or dropping of Kindred. The fact that Spencer did tease Kindred does not invalidate these as padding.

Last Remains is not what those were leading to, is is simply the first arc that focusing on Kindred instead of something else.

Honestly, that's probably why i wasn't that mad about the Kindred mistery lasting as long as it did, there was a lot more that i could focus on, but now that we got to him, i feel that there is a good story here, but the pacing is really annoying.

[Snoop Dogg]

One thing that is constructive I hope Mr. Spencer does is give us a single-issue breather more often. So far, we've only had two: "Arrivals/Destinations" from issue #29 and "Time and Time Again" from #37. The latter was even more interesting with the Clairvoyant, which Pete hasn't used since then (how did he not use it to figure out Sin-Eater and Kindred's plan? How did he not use it to figure out most of the book going forward?).

these, along with the first issue, the gibbon, and the gog flashback, are the best stories in the run
all one-shots
hmmmmm