Not going to lie, this might be the worst run of the book in 20 years. No joke. The Makckie/Byrne run was pretty bad, but this is in the same boat. Peter working for Norman after Norman killed his child, girlfriend, etc? Mary Jane and Peter at odds again? It really doesn't feel like i'm reading a comic about the same Peter Parker/Spider-Man that has come before. Spencer put the book in the right direction and a competent writer should have been able to pick up the ball and run with it. Instead Wells picked up the ball and ran in the opposite direction taking the book back to where we were when BND started. I hate this.
Pretty evenly divided amongst my twitter circle of friends. Half are really loving it, the other not so much.
Based off the three issues I read and plot points mentioned online it's just not for me. I'm a fan of Pete/MJ and they've been handled very badly, so I feel pretty ok personally about dropping the book.
I'm not a fan of Pete aligning with Norman Osborn either.
I am very curious about the Hobgoblin arc because it felt like Spencer was going somewhere with it before leaving so abruptly. But I can't really seeing myself buying ASM again until there's a creative change.
Now that I think about it, Hobgoblin is probable of the most major Spidey villains Spencer never really did anything with in his run (well, other than Venom, but that's to be expected).
I'll be honest, I'm buying the issues just out of habit and curiosity. If I had the discipline, i would drop this and get a better book or just save the money. lately I been turn in all my completed modern runs(atleast with one with a omnibus coming out) and keeping my old runs which include 80s 90s comics like JMS Spec, JMS Amazing(I stop at the last issue that JRJR did right before Sins Past).
I feel like Spencer had big plans for him as well as Chameleon that never panned out. He was seeding something weird going on with Ned's clone from very early in his run. I'm not sure what was up with how the Kindred mystery was paced, if it had more to do with covid or editorial getting cold feet about OMD being reversed. But it feels like once Spencer wrapped up the Kindred stuff he was going to dive into the Ned Leeds/Foreigner/Chameleon plotline.
Maybe even retcon Peter's SHIELD parents, since he seemed to be going down a checklist with regard to unpopular Spider-Man storylines. .
Last edited by David Walton; 10-13-2022 at 10:36 AM.
I thought this issue was better than the previous 10 in this run. But I am biased as the Hobgoblin is one of my favourite Spidey villains.
“Somewhere, in our darkest night, we made up the story of a man who will never let us down.”
- Grant Morrison on Superman
This probably isn't even Hobgoblin, but someone in the costume for three issues.
I think another thing that bothers me is that we finally have Romita Jr. back on Spider-Man, but it might be with one of the worst writers this book has had. I would have loved to have seen him work with Spencer as there were so many times he could have drawn some cool villains.
Hah, I'm not surprised at this.
Honestly, it's difficult to make Roderick stand out after Norman stole his best traits to pretend he was always a cool villain, Roderick is almost redundant.
Basically a lot of things Roderick could do to torment Spidey, Norman can also do and it gets a much more personal connection between 'em to make it more impactful.
Hell, it's no surprise that he actually gets to do something once Norman is out of the picture as Green Goblin.
He had a lot of chances to do it though, 74 issues, that free comic book day, tie-ins to events that were in total 9 issues, 2 giant size comics, 3 extra issues from 2099 event, 2 prelude issues, and Sinister War with 4 issues, giving him 21 extra issues, making it be in total 95 issues to tell his story (And with how some of these are longer than usual, in practice it might be a 100+ issues run in page count), he had plenty of time to tell a Roderick story.
Hell, he could at least get involved in Foreigner's casino in some way, that would be the most fitting place for him to be used, and maybe even have Ned confront him for brainwashing him too if he was around during that final battle there (And considering Roderick decided to get him killed off too once he felt he didn't need Ned anymore, Ned has a lot of reasons to be pissed with Roderick), and this would keep him away from the Kindred nonsense too (Well, until the very end when Kindred forces everyone to fight in that "Sinister War").
He could also be involved because of Fisk too, since he was working for Fisk in the Ravencroft mini.
So yeah, while editorial fucked up Spencer's run at some point, Spencer not using some of the characters he had available is on himself, and if he was planning to use Roderick, well, it's his own fault for not doing so, I don't see how he never got the chance with all of this in mind.
The problem there is that the Clone Conspiracy process was more of a reanimation since it used their physical remains and psychic residue to restore them. That's why they have their memories fully intact up to the moment of death and why ones like Lizard and Ben Reilly were confirmed to have the souls of the originals. So it seems weird that they killed off Clone Conspiracy Ned (who would have been the real one) in favor of saying the original Ned was alive this whole time and making CC Ned a glaring plot hole.