Amazing Spider-Man #622: "The Gauntlet: It Is the Life"

** (two of five stars)

Favorite Quote:  "If I have to penetrate Morbius's terrifying...uh...free clinic for the poor...of DEATH...it's going to be at the height of morning rush hour!"  -- Spidey

Summary

Spidey discovers that the Black Cat has sold the blood they retrieved from Mr. Negative in the previous arc to a group of vampire wannabees.  Dressing in his finest goth gear (seriously, it's pretty amazing), Peter hits the club where the wannabees gather, only to discover from a "helpful" stranger that his blood was bought by Morbius.  Spidey breaks into Morbius' clinic, only to discover (again) that the "helpful" stranger was in fact Morbius' undead ex-fiancée.  Spidey and Morbius stake her, and Morbius reveals he had bought Spidey's blood (and its obvious healing powers) in an attempt to cure his best friend of an undead plague.  Spidey then offers Morbius his blood to help him synthesize a cure.

The Review

I really, really want, at some point, to give Van Lente something higher than two stars.  But, the Morbius story here is just kind of a mess.  It seems totally pointless and I have no idea how you could even pretend the Kravinoffs were in any way involved, again calling into question the whole "The Gauntlet" aspect.  The good news is that it's only 12 pages long, as opposed to the 20-page long "secondary" feature on Flash Thompson by Greg Weisman.

The Good

1) Peter in goth gear was just...I mean...amazing.

2) Peter's ringtone is "If ya liked it, then ya should put a ring on it."  Nice, nice touch Weisman!

The Bad

1) OK, I don't buy, at all, that the Black Cat would sell Spidey's blood.  I mean, granted, the fact that she did so gives us the vision that is Peter Parker in goth wear, so I'll forgive Van Lente.  But, even Felicia isn't so amoral that she'd ignore the repercussions of selling Spider-Man's blood on the open market.  Mr. Negative is a pretty plugged-in kind of guy, so what was keeping him from simply buying up the blood, like Morbius did?  Why would she go through the trouble of stealing the blood from Mr. Negative only to wind up putting it on the market where he could buy it?

2) I also am now, as I mentioned in the last entry, required to complain, officially, about "The Gauntlet."  So far, it's a been a big to-do about nothing.  I mean, we don't even see the Kravinoffs at all anymore.  I'm sure we'll get some big reveal at the end of "The Gaunlet" that shows that they've been manipulating all the events.  But, it's going to feel hollow and forced since we're not really even seeing the slightest hint of them doing it.  The whole affair is the opposite of the great Tracer-Killer storyline from a few issues ago; in that storyline, we slowly got clues and gradually built to a reveal that made sense.  The looseness of this storyline has left me feeling kind of vaguely disappointed in the title, because we're missing the attention to detail that we saw for the first 50 or so issues of the new status quo.  They've got to wrap up this affair quickly so we can move onto something more like the Tracer-Killer or the "New Ways to Die!"/"Character Assassination"/"American Son" sequence.

3) So, as predicted, we seem to have just elided over Peter calling Flash "puny" during the Chameleon arc, because I'm pretty sure Flash wouldn't have been so happy to see his friend Peter had we actually addressed that.  I mean, I'm glad we have, but it still annoys me.