Amazing Spider-Man #660: "Fantastic Voyage"

*** (three of five stars)

Favorite Quote:  "Hullllo!  Dimensional Rift!  Can you merge me with a paladin Spidey and a +2 broadsword?"  -- Spidey, to the dimensional rift

Summary 

The FF finds itself fighting the Sinister Six while the FF kids fend off the zombie pirates.  Mr. Fantastic tries to reason with Doc Ock, telling him that the dimensional portal threatens all existence.  Doc Ock tells Reed he doesn't have the capacity to understand his plans.  Valeria figures out the "zombie pirates" are robots, and Spidey figures out the Sinister Six members are as well, when Sandman doesn't transform to sand.  The Chameleon and Mysterio are revealed to be the only flesh-and-blood members of the Sinister Six present; the other four have invaded the Baxter Building.  (The building had been sealed against Sandman after his turn in the Frightful Four, but the kids left open the hatch when they left to meet the FF in the Caribbean.)  Doc Ock retrieves one of Reed's inventions, which he needs to "finish the tapestry of destiny [he's] been weaving."  Meanwhile, the FF begins switching powers, since the dimensional rift is causing alternate realities -- where the FFers got different powers -- to come into existence.  The FF kids are also affected, including Dragon Man, who begins attacking the team.  Valeria directs Sue to retrieve the tachyon gun on Dragon Man's back, which she fires at the portal.  The portal explodes with the children still in the blast radius, but Spidey saves them.  Spidey laments letting the Chameleon and Mysterio escape, but Sue and Reed tell him he's too hard on himself.  Back in New York, Carlie confronts Pete about the business trip, and he tells her that he's going on secret business trips, that Mr. Modell knows about them, and that she's got to trust him.  She then reveals that she got a Spider-Man tattoo and, well, all's well that ends well.

In the first back-up feature, a jock terrorizes a nerd in high school.  When the nerd pulls a gun on him, he uses Spidey powers to defend himself, killing the kid and fleeing.  The Jackal is watching, since this kid is one of his test subjects for the coming infestation.

In the second back-up feature, Spidey and Ghost Rider are chasing the Servicer, who has merged with Ghost Rider's bike and fled up the Empire State Building.  There, the Service channels the bike's powers to steal the maximum number of souls for Hell.  Ghost Rider confronts the Servicer and defeats him, telling him that the bike chose him, not the Servicer, and that he doesn't belong to heaven or hell anymore.  The Servicer disappears, and Spidey asks for a ride to Tribeca. 

The Review

My gut reaction, before I wrote the review, was to give this story a three because I thoroughly enjoyed it.  The only thing that kept me from giving it a four was that it got really, really convoluted by the end.  In writing about the goods, mehs, and bads, though, I found that I had a lot more negative (or vaguely negative) things to say about the book than good.  But, overall, the good -- the fact that it was fun -- outweighed the bad (and the meh).  So, I'm sticking with the three stars.  As I say below, though, I'm looking forward to a return to regular ol' Spidey stories.

The Good

The issue, for the most part, is fun.  Although I outline the drawbacks of the convoluted plot below, the positive side effect of it was that it did give the issue a sort of WTF? kind of quality.  The last issue had a similar vibe, like when Franklin asks if they were on Scoobie-Doo, which results in Sue and Peter realizing they're being played.  The switching powers is kind of an old schtick, but it was handled pretty well.  (Though, when Ben asked Peter if he was felling all right, I was hoping the reveal would be that he was the Spider-Thing.)

The Meh

1) Ok, this story gets really confusing, really quickly.  Dr. Octopus created a dimensional portal and tagged three dimensional abnormalities, presumably to said portal, in order to lead the Future Foundation to the Caribbean island where the Fantastic Four first faced Dr. Doom.  He then had the Chameleon and Mysterio set up a trap, full of zombie pirates, on said island, all so that he and the remaining three members of the Sinister Six could find something in the Baxter Building.  Uh-huh, OK.  I was confused why "Electro" tells the FFers to leave the island or lose their lives, since the Sinister Six, after all, led them to the island on purpose, but then I realized that the FF didn't know that (though Valeria apparently did, but she didn't have time to warn them).  But, then, I wondered why exactly Dr. Octopus decided to go with a dimensional anomaly in the first place, but then I realized that dimensional anomalies were the FF's stock in trade.  If I were an insane, genius super-villain trying to get the FF's attention, I'd probably go with a dimensional anomaly, too.  So, in the end, I actually realized that, despite all the ins-and-outs, Slott's plotting is pretty sound here.  But, it took a lot of reflection to get there.  While I was reading the story itself, it was fairly confusing, which distracted from the fun.

2) OK, so, Carlie.  First, we move right into Peter's "fight" with her with almost no segue.  One minute, we're on an island in the Caribbean, the next minute we're in Peter's loft in the middle of a relationship discussion with Carlie.  Second, although I'm glad she didn't get the Goblin tattoo and we got to see them be all cute with one another, I'm still not entirely sure why Slott introduced this sub-plot.  My hope (fingers crossed) is that he did so in order to give Peter a chance to give Carlie the "I do secret things with my Horizon job" line.  If so, I'm hoping we'll avoid what I was afraid was going to happen in my last review, which is that we're going to have to live through a never-ending series of "Peter, where were you?" fights.  Hopefully, Carlie will accept Peter's "secret job" (which she seems to do) and we'll be able to just enjoy Peter having a nice, stable relationship, at least for a while.  But, I still think this sub-plot wound up being an unnecessary distraction from the fun of the FF appearance.

3) The Ghost Rider secondary (tertiary?) feature, which had been fun last issue, is kind of meh this issue, suffering from the same overly-expository dialogue as the main feature.  But, overall, I'm still glad they gave it to us and I hope it becomes a regular bit, these "Marvel Team-Up" features.

The Unknown

If Miles Warren can inject some kid with a Spider-Sense, I assume the upcoming conflict with him is going to be the thing that re-instates Spidey's Spider-Sense, right?

The Bad

1) Van Lente, who I really, really don't like, as you'll see as I progress with the "Brand New Day" posts, gives us some really cheesy dialogue here at times.  Sue Richards telling Electro that her days as a professional hostage are long over, Sue and Reed telling Peter how proud he should be of himself:  I actually found myself rolling my eyes.  I'll give him credit for Ben and Pete's banter, but otherwise a lot of the dialogue felt way too wooden to me.

2) So, despite Doc Ock's "genius," the only reason they can get into the Baxter Building is because the kids left open the door?  Really?

3) I'm not really sure how Spidey saves the FF kids.  He just creates, what, a web?  The blast is so weak that Spidey's web can contain it?  If so, was it really that big of a threat?

4) Avengers Academy next issue?  Really?  I mentioned in one of the Avengers cross-overs earlier in Slott's run that I actually like how Slott is incorporating what Spidey does outside the title into the title.  But, I mean that more in terms of referencing events happening outside the title, not constantly importing the various members of the teams on which he serves.  "Amazing Spider-Man" isn't supposed to be "Marvel Team-Up."  In fact, we seem to now have a secondary feature for that.  I read "Avengers Academy" #1 and I can't say I was really all that impressed, so I can't say I'm jazzed about the next issue.  Can't we, I don't know, have Stilt-Man go on a murderous rampage or something?  Who's next?  The Defenders?