Nick Spencer’s Amazing Spider-Man has been a rollercoaster ride. When reaching the highest height Spencer creates a lot of excitement around what he is doing with Spider-Man and the cast of this series. But when he reaches the lows Spencer’s Amazing Spider-Man things are not great or exciting. The most recent story arc involving Chameleon and Teresa Parker was an example of the latter. The entire story came across as a filler story until the next entry in the Kindred Saga. Now with Spencer’s run coming to an end we are returning to Kindred and the building of the Sinister War, that will be the final big story arc in his run. How will Sinister War get set up? Let’s find out with Amazing Spider-Man #70
Writer: Nick Spencer
Artist: Federico Vicentini
Colorist: Alex Sinclair
Story Rating: 7 Night Girls out of 10
Art Rating: 7 Night Girls out of 10
Overall Rating: 7 Night Girls out of 10
Synopsis: At Empire State University Peter Parker sees Dr. Curt Connor’s lab destroyed. Peter finds Dr. Connors in the wreckage and asks what happened.
Dr. Connors talks to Peter about how he has been working on upgrading the Isotope-Genome Accelerator to help himself and his family.
That brings things to the previous day Doctor Octopus, Kraven, Sandman, and Electro attacked him in his lab. Dr. Connors tried to escape but was captured. Doctor Octopus then activated the Isotope-Genome Accelerator to separate the Lizard from Curt.
Back in the present, Peter takes Dr. Connors to stay with his family in the sewers.
Peter then leaves and changes into his Spider-Man costume as he realizes the Sinister Six are back.
At Avengers Mansion, Mary Jane Watson talks with Jarvis to see if she can find information on where Carlie Cooper might be. She ends up not finding any answers.
As she continues to question people at Carlie’s apartment and work MJ is unable to find out anything.
Somewhere unknown, locked up in a prison cell, Harry Osborn reveals to Carlie that he discovered odd activity from a dormant Oscorp account. When he detected this he traced the activity to Paris, France. As soon as he arrived he was attacked by Kindred and thrown in the prison cell they are currently in.
Harry then asks Carlie for her story. Carlie is hesitant because while examining one of the bodies Kindred had exhumed (during The Last Remains) she discovered the corpse of Harry Osborn. Carlie decides to stay quiet as she isn’t sure how to talk about it.
Over at the Bar With No Name, Overdrive finds Boomerang and offers him a job.
Elsewhere Spider-Man runs into a dead trying to find the Sinister Six and can only think about what the villain group’s return means.
Over at a graveyard Doctor Octopus tells Kraven, Sandman, Electro and Lizard to wait outside for him.
Doctor Octopus goes inside Kindred’s hideout in the graveyard and demands answers on what Kindred is keeping from him. Kindred says the answers will come in time but right now they need to get the sixth member for the Sinister Six. Kindred happens to have the perfect member for Doctor Octopus’ Sinister Six.
Mysterio suddenly makes his grand entrance as the sixth member of the Sinister Six.
Kindred then monologues how all the players of his grand plan for Peter Parker are in place. This includes the Sinister Six, Savage Six (Vulture, Stegron the Dinosaur Man, Rhino, King Cobra, Scorpion, Tarantula), Syndicate (Trapstr, White Rabbit, Beetle, Scorpia, Lady Octopus, Electro/Francine Frye), Boomerang, and Overdrive. Kindred states the mystery everyone is trying to solve has something sinister hiding underneath those answers. End of issue.
The Good: Having a strong focus to fully lay the groundwork for the upcoming Sinister War did wonders for the story presented in Amazing Spider-Man #70. This was Nick Spencer at his best as a writer. Every character got the time needed to make them all have important roles in the upcoming Spider-Man event.
Starting out with the Sinister Six attacking and separating the Lizard from Doctor Curt Connors reestablished Doctor Otto Octavius villain group as a serious threat. This was something that was very much needed for Doc Ock in particular as he is firmly back in a villain role. The way he and the rest of the Sinister Six treated Doctor Connors makes you hate them.
Which works well into how Doc Ock is currently motivated to discover what secrets about himself Kindred is keeping. This sets things up for Doc Ock to be a major wild card in the Sinister War event as he could play either side of the conflict, especially if he recovers his Superior Spider-Man memories.
The confrontation also worked to bring Kindred back into the fold since he has been a non-factor in the last two storylines of Amazing Spider-Man. Spencer comfort in writing Kindred as a completely evil being is apparent anything time the villain is on screen. The way he has so much going on with kickstarting the Sinister War you get the feeling we are finally at Kindred’s endgame. After 70+ issues of building up to that endgame it’s a relief to feel like we are at the end of this story.
On Spider-Man’s side of things, it is good that he is finally looking to be proactive about this whole Kindred and Sinister War event. Peter Parker has obviously been distracted with other major conflicts lately but the threat the Kindred poses isn’t something that can be left alone. And now with the Sinister Six returning Peter as Spider-Man can’t just respond when things happen. Which is something we see that he finally understand with the last page he appears in Amazing Spider-Man #70.
All of that said, the most interesting thing that Amazing Spider-Man #70 set up is the possibility of three different Harry Osborns being in this continuity. Just like Carlie Cooper reaction, this is information that is hard to process what it actually means for the whole Kindred story. It certainly was an unexpected development, even after we found out that the Brand New Day Harry Osborn was locked up by Kindred. This creates a lot of questions as to how Spencer plans to wrap up the entire Kindred Saga.
It’ll also be interesting to see what roles Mary Jane Watson, Carlie Cooper, and the rest of the supporting cast in Spencer’s run will play in Sinister War. Here we see that MJ and Carlie in particular have direct ties with the whole mystery around the three Harry Osborns. Which would work to not just have Peter as the one driving every single plotline as he’ll be busy with the different versions of the Sinister Six groups.
Federico Vicentini was at the top of his game with Amazing Spider-Man #70. With how just about every Spider-Man villain is in this issue Vicentini nailed all of their looks. They all had a classic feel, which works well to build how big the Sinister War is. He also did a good job getting over the uncertainty that Spider-Man, MJ, and Carlie all had throughout this issue.
The Bad: The only problem with Amazing Spider-Man #70 is how much it has going on with this set-up issue. We’ve seen many times in the past with The Last Remains, Hunted, Chameleon Conspiracy, and other long-term arcs that Spencer is not at his best when he has multiple casts of characters to juggle. In those stories we saw the tie-in issues are normally used as a crutch by Spencer to tell important stories that don’t fit in the main chapters of an event. That concern is very much something that makes its presence known in the final pages when you see how many characters Spencer is bringing in for Sinister War.
Overall: Amazing Spider-Man #70 did its job of setting the stage for the upcoming Sinister War. All the players are all given just enough time to build excitement for the latest Spider-Man event that we are about to get. Now that the scope of Sinister War is set-up hopefully Spencer’s final big Spider-Man event can live up to the 70+ issues of development.
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