Creative TeamWriter: Fred Van Lente
Artist: Paulo Siqueira
Inker: Amilton Santos
Colorist: Jeromy Cox
Story – Marked
Review
It’s been a while since The Spot’s last appearance. The Spot has always been one of Spider-Man’s more goofier villains. Though even with that The Spot’s powers have always gave him the potential to be much more of a threat. I think The Spot from the 90s Spider-Man cartoon showed that the character can be a very powerful foe. But for some reason the comic book version has never been given the chance to shine, well that is until this issue of Amazing Spider-Man by Fred Van Lente who has done some great work with the other Marvel titles he’s been writing.
Van Lente really turned up The Spot’s powers in this issue and it was pretty cool seeing him use his powers in order to kill all of the Russian thugs. And the fight between Spider-Man and The Spot was really well done even though it was a bit short. Paulo Siqueira did a nice job with all of the action stuff with my favorite images in the issue being when The Spot uses his powers to have Spider-Man punch himself and at the end when Spider-Man was hanging on his web at the end of the issue and scared the living day lights out of some thug. The one thing I found his work to be an odd combination of Dodson and Jimenez Spider-Man work. I did find it funny that the bad guy in this issue kind of look like Oliver Queen from the DCU with a longer.
Now maybe my favorite moment(s) of this issue, and maybe this week in comics, was when Spider-Man tried to copy Christian Bale’s Batman voice from The Dark Knight (though the film wasn’t directly mentioned just Bale). I cracked up in his first attempt at trying to use the voice to intimidate the Russian thug than coughing right after wards. It was just a damn funny scene right up there when Spider-Man punched himself in the face. And it was awesome when he used it again at the end and actually making it work without coughing right afterwards that will be in my Legen–wait for it-dary Comic Book Highlights of the Week on Wednesday.
The only thing I had a problem with in this issue was the use of the Russian thugs as the bad guys for this issue. I would have much rather preferred seeing Mr. Negative have some sort of involvement with the plot since the character seems to have been forgotten. I kind of just want that characters involvement in ASM to be over since it is the only storyline left over from the start of Brand New Day. But this is only a minor complaint that does not take away from my enjoyment of this issue.
Issue Rating
Story: 8.2/10 – Fred Van Lente did a great job with his first issue on Amazing Spider-Man and I hope he does another issue, maybe even a whole story arc, later on since his writing perfectly fits a title like Amazing Spider-Man.
Art: 8/10 – Though Paulo Siqueira’s artwork had a few odd panels overall I found his art to be a nice fit for ASM.
Overall: 8.1/10 – This was a nice one-and-done issue and I am really excited for the next few months of ASM issues.