Amazing Spider-Man 55 (Spoilers)

[Spidey_62]

Yeah so my biggest issue with this whole thing is the padding. This has some fun Peter,Harry,MJ drama and the Osborn/Fisk teamup, great Gleason art, but I've said it many times that a big problem I have with modern big superhero comics is the amount they pad out these stories just because they can. "It's Spider-Man, that's our most sure-book so we can stretch everything out to the maximum." This issue has 2 full pages of black, that's egregious to me. It can have some artistic merit doing something like that if we really got our moneys worth from this whole story but wasting the real estate when it's already so decompressed with stuff like that is just not earned at this point. The only big concrete information we got on Kindred this whole story is that it's Harry and that was in the first part. The rest of this thing was dragged through the mud to basically give us no new information. The only stuff we get is more hints at what we all suspect regarding OMD.

I know solicits blow things out of proportion but how did the solicit for this issue really merit what it said? "We'll never look at Peter or Spider-Man the same again after this issue!"

Really? What happened lmao?

I don't doubt it's all going interesting places, I'm intrigued. I just wish it all felt less padded, I dunno. It really didn't need all the tie-in .LR issues at all, not every "big" story literally needs to be big because this is definitely the midpoint of the overall arc and not the big climactic moment.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Warning: this turned out to be very long and a stream of consciousness about Spider-Man that I assume might be taken very harshly. =)

I live in a glass house. I never throw any stones.

Relax, you can speak as you like. I would never hold that against anyone. I happen to be the reigning Wall of Text offender here.

The problem I think isn't the marriage: it's that the hook of Spider-Man was always *the growth arc of the character*, and without being able to do the growth arc he's just another no-name hero.

Agreed on this.

The internet has led to a higher level of awareness for writers about the slow death of the mainstream comic industry. If you don't believe me, just look at the front page of this site, which at the time I'm reading it has *one* article about comics in the first 2-3 screens of scroll, that being a clickbaity "Did Batman Adventures just turn Robin into a KILLER?!!". The other articles are 50/50 split between comic book movies and all other forms of entertainment (this isn't the only site that can't live on comics news alone, a quick look at two or three other prominent ones will show you the same thing). This isn't an industry that is growing - people are paid terribly for the most part, many creators holding down a second job. Most talented writers who *can* speak to young people are doing it through their own graphic novels which isn't any worse of a gamble that creating something for a Marvel or DC that you don't own, and losing control over a story you're making. There's lots here to unpack but this is already long and veering way off-topic. =)

I think you are right on this. It's all tied together.

Fundamentally, Spider-Man needs to go into public domain as with all the rest.

[your_name_here]

One positive:

Despite having 2 blank page I think we got several pages for free. This was an oversized issue by 4 pages or so I believe and it was regular priced.

One negative:

In hindsight, this arc was a midway arc and did not need .LRs. There should have been no more than 6 issues max to tell the story told here. You could have easily had a page or two to show what was happening in .LRs. Too over indulgent for a story that did not progress things enough to warrant it. I do believe over indulgent is the right word here.

One extra note: Despite being annoyed I loved every issue of this arc. Especially issue 55. What an epic.

Agree with all this.

[Frontier]

Anya and Miles are the children. Gwen should still be 21 if I remember.

How in the world is Gwen aging so fast?

Gwen was 19 in the Latour run and spent time in prison. She's pretty much 20 now.

[Arsenal]

One positive:

Despite having 2 blank page I think we got several pages for free. This was an oversized issue by 4 pages or so I believe and it was regular priced.

One negative:

In hindsight, this arc was a midway arc and did not need .LRs. There should have been no more than 6 issues max to tell the story told here. You could have easily had a page or two to show what was happening in .LRs. Too over indulgent for a story that did not progress things enough to warrant it. I do believe over indulgent is the right word here.

One extra note: Despite being annoyed I loved every issue of this arc. Especially issue 55. What an epic.

Some are understandably frustrated that it wasn’t (so far) what they wanted it to be and I get that. I do. Yet at the same time I do think the arc (w/the LR: Post Mortem included, probably not the .LR companions though) will be looked at more favorably in hindsight once it can be judged in proper context of Spencer’s complete story.

All I know is that I went back to issue 50 before I cracked open the new issue and read the entire arc in one shot (without the companions) and had a blast the entire time.

[WebSlingWonder]

I live in a glass house. I never throw any stones.

Relax, you can speak as you like. I would never hold that against anyone. I happen to be the reigning Wall of Text offender here.



Agreed on this.



I think you are right on this. It's all tied together.

Fundamentally, Spider-Man needs to go into public domain as with all the rest.

Why do you think Spider-Man needs to go in the public domain? No hate; I'm just curious.

[HypnoHustler]

Yeah so my biggest issue with this whole thing is the padding. This has some fun Peter,Harry,MJ drama and the Osborn/Fisk teamup, great Gleason art, but I've said it many times that a big problem I have with modern big superhero comics is the amount they pad out these stories just because they can. "It's Spider-Man, that's our most sure-book so we can stretch everything out to the maximum." This issue has 2 full pages of black, that's egregious to me. It can have some artistic merit doing something like that if we really got our moneys worth from this whole story but wasting the real estate when it's already so decompressed with stuff like that is just not earned at this point. The only big concrete information we got on Kindred this whole story is that it's Harry and that was in the first part. The rest of this thing was dragged through the mud to basically give us no new information. The only stuff we get is more hints at what we all suspect regarding OMD.

I know solicits blow things out of proportion but how did the solicit for this issue really merit what it said? "We'll never look at Peter or Spider-Man the same again after this issue!"

Really? What happened lmao?

I suspect the solicits are describing the wrong issues as this isn’t the last issue of LR either. Remember a couple issues ago the solicit said there’d be a battle in #53 like we’d never seen, and then it was just a flashback to BND? And then #54 had the actual battle with Harry. So I think this is an ongoing soliciting FUBAR, not Spencer lying about what happens. My 2 cents anyway.

[oldschool]

I suspect the solicits are describing the wrong issues as this isn’t the last issue of LR either. Remember a couple issues ago the solicit said there’d be a battle in #53 like we’d never seen, and then it was just a flashback to BND? And then #54 had the actual battle with Harry. So I think this is an ongoing soliciting FUBAR, not Spencer lying about what happens. My 2 cents anyway.

Yeah, I think that's exactly what happened here; solicits are probably written way in advance and they just didn't correct the mistake. Honestly, Covid delays wrecked havoc with everything this year; I am sure they are still catching up.

[WebSlingWonder]

Warning: this turned out to be very long and a stream of consciousness about Spider-Man that I assume might be taken very harshly. =)

TL-DR; Spider-Man as a comic character has been busted for a long time (at least 25 years), most modern popular Spider-Man media has succeeded by avoiding the trap the comics are in, and I think circumstances are such that we will not see the character "rescued" in comic books again. The situation with Spider-Man is very emblematic of the struggles the industry is dealing with too.

Much longer note below:
If we're being totally realistic about it - IMO, Spider-man as a hero archetype has been broken for years and years. Quesada mistakenly thought it was the marriage that was killing the character - that proved to be totally wrong, as Dan Slott famously proclaimed "single Spider-man" was going to outsell all the married stuff and had to walk that back after *readers* walked away from the book at the time. There isn't anything "new" to say with Spider-man for the most part, which is why you see current "in-canon" stories revisiting story beats that happened 15 years ago.

I believe some of the other difficulties with Spider-Man is that he's essentially a product of his time, with me defining "his time" as from 1967 to roughly 1992 - 25 years. (I'll come back to this later). 1992/93 is around the time when you *first* saw Marvel attempt to "fix" Spider-Man by resetting his clock, so to speak (by introducing the Clone Saga and their eventual goal of sidelining Peter), so they clearly thought something was not going well either. There's a relatively continual period of growth and transition over the time between ASM #1 and ASM #350, with the 50 issues post-Venom being a little more formulaic / nothing ever changes here sort of deal). At this point onwards, there's attempts after attempts to "shake things up" in order to draw interest to the character (sorry if I don't have the order completely correct):
* Clone Saga. Aunt May dies.
* Ben is the real Spider-Man
* Ben dies, Norman is back from the dead
* Totem Spider-Man. Sins Past. Eek.
* Spider-Man reveals his identity to the public (to be fair this was more an obvious cheat where everyone knew it would be reset, people just didn't understand the scope of it at the time)
* they revert Peter to not being married (and imply he's now in his mid-late 20s)
* they do the "Renew Your Vows" limited series but the writers find it so difficult to write a 9 year old that they age up May as soon as possible (to be fair, this *is* actually a well known problem in lots of fiction - not only does this age tend to be really annoying, but it's incredibly limiting in super hero fiction:
a) at this point the hero comes across as grossly irresponsible if they're neglecting their child to go out and fight
b) toddlers and small children tend to, well, be annoying on occasion and they're often a disruption to work around rather than a story element to work with)
* period of relative stability with Slott's stories focusing far more on Peter's villains than Peter himself (Dr Octopus, Jackal, Lizard, Green Goblin). Kraven is brought back from the dead. Small status quo shift to the lab.
* However, it's the same problem as with 325-350; the audience for the comic continues to get older and smaller, and Peter as a character remains relatively static. This is problematic. The hope was that undoing the marriage would lead to a *lot* of new fans picking up the book and so this would all be fresh and new and you can afford for Peter to revisit being a continual loser like he was in the first 75-200 issues of the book (which is what they were trying for). However, instead the audience is still getting older and smaller. The big arcs are:
* revisiting a story from twenty five years ago (Kraven's Last Hunt)
* revisiting a story from twenty years ago (Ben Reilly as Jackal),
* removing Peter from the book entirely and focusing on a different character as the main one (Dr Octopus)

Nothing's really working.

This whole "he has a new costume" deal *of course* isn't meant to last. It's designed to get a bit more attention paid to Spencer's current direction, but *finally* coming back to my original point, I don't believe that will work in the long-term either. The character's relevancy tapered off as after 25 years of evolving an originally teenaged character, there was nowhere left for the character to go that wouldn't make writing him much harder: i.e. if he has a child, you *cannot* kill the child without killing the book or doing some sort of massive universe wide reset. As it was they did that terribly ugly storyline with the baby and then part of the One More Day thing (IIRC) was to imply/assure that MJ's pregnancy never happened. You can't age the child either because that moves Spider-man *WAY* out of his zone of "every day hero". You don't want him to have a child because of the reasons I wrote above.

The problem I think isn't the marriage: it's that the hook of Spider-Man was always *the growth arc of the character*, and without being able to do the growth arc he's just another no-name hero. Right now without the calling back to 30 year old stories, you could switch the costume and character around and this could be any late 20s/early 30s hero. Note that every iteration of the character in other media post the 1990s "Spider-Man" cartoon has almost always focused on Peter being in his teens (or in the case of Spider-verse, making the main character young and making Peter an alternate universe aged-up guy). This allows you a growth arc over the course of several seasons of a TV show, or installments of a movie series.

The comic can't do that anymore, and even if Marvel could reset it, there are other issues:

a) for better or worse, when Stan Lee was originally writing Spider-Man he was *very* dialed into youth culture for a 40 year old man. He was constantly visiting colleges, high schools, etc. and you can tell from the letters pages that Spider-Man was directly speaking to that audience. Spider-Man hasn't spoken to a teen audience for at least 30 years. Look at Waid trying to write Champions to see how embarrassing it is when a writer is completely out of touch with the demo they're trying to speak to.
b) the entire comic book setup of how Peter's life as a teenager works makes no sense in light of the technology of today - I believe this is another contributing reason as to why his origin was skipped in the modern MCU. The whole inciting event for Peter doesn't work; reality TV, modern internet and the North American emphasis on celebrity means as a teenager in the States, Peter is far more likely to go to Youtube and show off his scientific skills or become a public celebrity, not a private one. But if you don't talk about the origin (which they notably did not in the Spiderman MCU movies), you don't have to address all of the anachronisms that show up as a result of the origin.

c) The internet has led to a higher level of awareness for writers about the slow death of the mainstream comic industry. If you don't believe me, just look at the front page of this site, which at the time I'm reading it has *one* article about comics in the first 2-3 screens of scroll, that being a clickbaity "Did Batman Adventures just turn Robin into a KILLER?!!". The other articles are 50/50 split between comic book movies and all other forms of entertainment (this isn't the only site that can't live on comics news alone, a quick look at two or three other prominent ones will show you the same thing). This isn't an industry that is growing - people are paid terribly for the most part, many creators holding down a second job. Most talented writers who *can* speak to young people are doing it through their own graphic novels which isn't any worse of a gamble that creating something for a Marvel or DC that you don't own, and losing control over a story you're making. There's lots here to unpack but this is already long and veering way off-topic. =)

More thoughts but I've typed enough, time for me to go breathe. =)

I actually agree with all of this. Spider-Man is a broken character, and no matter who the writer is, someone's going to have to acknowledge that.

I will say that the last time we had a, I would say, fully adult Spider-Man was JMS: he implemented a lot of the maturity and nuance that goes into Peter, MJ, and Aunt May. But that maturity ended up being his downfall, because Marvel undermined him at every turn. Since then, it's felt like Spider-Man writers have been in a weird vacuum where they're just *doing* things, not really changing the game.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Why do you think Spider-Man needs to go in the public domain? No hate; I'm just curious.

The real problem with comics, with the fans, and with the debates on 'Spider-Man is about youth' is that Spider-Man is a property Marvel wants to make money with, and draw value from. It's not about treating Peter Parker as a character in a story but as a corporate brand.

If Spider-Man was public domain, then that all goes away. He can become like Robin Hood, like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, like Captain Ahab, or any other fairy tale. Spider-Man becomes a bedtime story you tell your kids, and the Spider-Man story you make up for your kid or nephew gets to be as canon as anything else. I can tell my nephew a variation of a fairy tale like Aladdin where I change up the ending and introduce new adventures and stuff, and it would be canon.

Some would argue about copyright and creators but how? Spider-Man was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, both are dead. Both creators had a vision and perspective about the character and Marvel editorial have repeatedly proven that they are not gonna be beholden to their vision and wishes for the character...so if Marvel isn't being faithful to Lee and Ditko who made it clear in their comics and their public observations many times over the decades that they saw the character as one who will grow old...then they don't have real justification to act as custodians for the character because they are in fact changing and altering and making Spider-Man vastly different from how he first started out. Marvel is not being faithful to the intentions of the creators the way that for instance, the Tolkien Estate under Christopher Tolkien has acted many times in trying to be faithful to the original vision of his father's work. In the latter case, you can make a case for copyright law to protect an IP but not in the case of Marvel. The whole "Spider-Man is about youth" thing that was cooked up by Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada and passed downwards via Brevoort and that has infected and contaminated the Spider-Man stories for the last 2 decades and in adaptations.

Now you can argue that Spider-Man writers and creators who work on the title deserve remuneration and value but again they aren't getting paid enough right now, and they are not willing to unionize. Alan Moore when he worked on public domain characters like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen earned more than he would with licensed titles. If Spider-Man was PD, then any writer on any title who writes a good take on Spider-Man and so on gets to keep more of his fair share and their art than if it were otherwise.

[RyanParkerMan]

I can't believe that was the "conclusion" to the story. By the way, I called that we weren't going to get any one more day reveal. And we didn't. Despite one BND reference, we are actually further from understanding what Harry is, how he became this way, what's the relationship between pre-OMD Harry and BND Harry, what MJ knows and doesn't, and what the fucking point of this drawn-out meaningless story was all about.

I am now done with Spencer's run. Spider-Man is like the Mets. Some good stuff in the 2000s, but no big wins, and the last time he was great was 35 years ago. Are you kidding me with this story? You put OMD all over us, after 12 years, and this is what we get? An explosion... MJ is okay... and the last page is the writer/ editor TELLING us how climactic the story was?

lol

You guys are a joke. It wasn't climactic at all. It was anti-climactic. No answers. No drama. No stakes.

What a shitty story. And for anyone reading this who hasn't read my posts, I was routing for this story to the very last issue. And i wasn't expecting a OMD reveal. I was expecting something. Harry's origin. Something. We got nothing. I'm not paying for anohter 30 issues to get the payoff. This was supposed to be the payoff for 2.5 years and 55 lackluster issues of comic books. What a disgrace.

[WebSlingWonder]

The real problem with comics, with the fans, and with the debates on 'Spider-Man is about youth' is that Spider-Man is a property Marvel wants to make money with, and draw value from. It's not about treating Peter Parker as a character in a story but as a corporate brand.

If Spider-Man was public domain, then that all goes away. He can become like Robin Hood, like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, like Captain Ahab, or any other fairy tale. Spider-Man becomes a bedtime story you tell your kids, and the Spider-Man story you make up for your kid or nephew gets to be as canon as anything else. I can tell my nephew a variation of a fairy tale like Aladdin where I change up the ending and introduce new adventures and stuff, and it would be canon.

Some would argue about copyright and creators but how? Spider-Man was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, both are dead. Both creators had a vision and perspective about the character and Marvel editorial have repeatedly proven that they are not gonna be beholden to their vision and wishes for the character...so if Marvel isn't being faithful to Lee and Ditko who made it clear in their comics and their public observations many times over the decades that they saw the character as one who will grow old...then they don't have real justification to act as custodians for the character because they are in fact changing and altering and making Spider-Man vastly different from how he first started out. Marvel is not being faithful to the intentions of the creators the way that for instance, the Tolkien Estate under Christopher Tolkien has acted many times in trying to be faithful to the original vision of his father's work. In the latter case, you can make a case for copyright law to protect an IP but not in the case of Marvel. The whole "Spider-Man is about youth" thing that was cooked up by Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada and passed downwards via Brevoort and that has infected and contaminated the Spider-Man stories for the last 2 decades and in adaptations.

Now you can argue that Spider-Man writers and creators who work on the title deserve remuneration and value but again they aren't getting paid enough right now, and they are not willing to unionize. Alan Moore when he worked on public domain characters like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen earned more than he would with licensed titles. If Spider-Man was PD, then any writer on any title who writes a good take on Spider-Man and so on gets to keep more of his fair share and their art than if it were otherwise.

Bravo, well done, old friend. I agree completely.

[Jonathangoop1811]

Now I'm worried, in the issue Harry mentions how Gwen went to Europe, and later mentions how Norman went to Europe and then the bridge, god, I hope this isn't a reference to Sins Past or if it is, Spencer fixes that horrible story and make it so nothing happened between Gwen and Norman.

[oldschool]

I can't believe that was the "conclusion" to the story. By the way, I called that we weren't going to get any one more day reveal. And we didn't. Despite one BND reference, we are actually further from understanding what Harry is, how he became this way, what's the relationship between pre-OMD Harry and BND Harry, what MJ knows and doesn't, and what the fucking point of this drawn-out meaningless story was all about.

I am now done with Spencer's run. Spider-Man is like the Mets. Some good stuff in the 2000s, but no big wins, and the last time he was great was 35 years ago. Are you kidding me with this story? You put OMD all over us, after 12 years, and this is what we get? An explosion... MJ is okay... and the last page is the writer/ editor TELLING us how climactic the story was?

lol

You guys are a joke. It wasn't climactic at all. It was anti-climactic. No answers. No drama. No stakes.

What a shitty story. And for anyone reading this who hasn't read my posts, I was routing for this story to the very last issue. And i wasn't expecting a OMD reveal. I was expecting something. Harry's origin. Something. We got nothing. I'm not paying for anohter 30 issues to get the payoff. This was supposed to be the payoff for 2.5 years and 55 lackluster issues of comic books. What a disgrace.

Yeah, I feel you on a lot of what you say here, old friend. The excess padding of this story, and the 2 1/2 years of teasing, deserves a much bigger payoff----but, to be fair, I think that is coming in the next 2 issues. This really wasn't the finale----the solicits were misleading: next week's ASM #56 is extra pages and, just judging by the preview that just came out, there is a lot more to be told. Hang in there for another issue or two if you can.....it may get a bit better for you.

[RyanParkerMan]

The real problem with comics, with the fans, and with the debates on 'Spider-Man is about youth' is that Spider-Man is a property Marvel wants to make money with, and draw value from. It's not about treating Peter Parker as a character in a story but as a corporate brand.

If Spider-Man was public domain, then that all goes away. He can become like Robin Hood, like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, like Captain Ahab, or any other fairy tale. Spider-Man becomes a bedtime story you tell your kids, and the Spider-Man story you make up for your kid or nephew gets to be as canon as anything else. I can tell my nephew a variation of a fairy tale like Aladdin where I change up the ending and introduce new adventures and stuff, and it would be canon.

Some would argue about copyright and creators but how? Spider-Man was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, both are dead. Both creators had a vision and perspective about the character and Marvel editorial have repeatedly proven that they are not gonna be beholden to their vision and wishes for the character...so if Marvel isn't being faithful to Lee and Ditko who made it clear in their comics and their public observations many times over the decades that they saw the character as one who will grow old...then they don't have real justification to act as custodians for the character because they are in fact changing and altering and making Spider-Man vastly different from how he first started out. Marvel is not being faithful to the intentions of the creators the way that for instance, the Tolkien Estate under Christopher Tolkien has acted many times in trying to be faithful to the original vision of his father's work. In the latter case, you can make a case for copyright law to protect an IP but not in the case of Marvel. The whole "Spider-Man is about youth" thing that was cooked up by Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada and passed downwards via Brevoort and that has infected and contaminated the Spider-Man stories for the last 2 decades and in adaptations.

Now you can argue that Spider-Man writers and creators who work on the title deserve remuneration and value but again they aren't getting paid enough right now, and they are not willing to unionize. Alan Moore when he worked on public domain characters like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen earned more than he would with licensed titles. If Spider-Man was PD, then any writer on any title who writes a good take on Spider-Man and so on gets to keep more of his fair share and their art than if it were otherwise.

Marvel Comics needs to pay their editors, writers, artists, staff, more to get better talent and Disney should make that investment, even if it makes Marvel Comics less profitable, as a story board for Disney movies, animation, toys, etc. I don't pretend to know how Disney views Marvel Comics, but from interviews with Iger and Fiege and others, to content on Disney+, it seems like thats how they view Marvel Comics. So why not invest in the comics division of the company? The movies are largely based on the last 15 years of marvel stories, along with the cartoons. Get better talent and along with better stories for your real money makers, you will pick up more fans and profit for better comics.