Amazing Spider-Man #25: This issue is quite good, mostly because Spencer seems to have a better read on Mary Jane than he does any other character appearing in this series. It isn't that the scenes with Spider-Man trying to save Curt Connors from himself were bad; it's just that we've been down that road so many times. But, Mary Jane confronting her past and deciding to get back to acting was new. Spencer has Mary Jane allude to how ridiculous her career trajectory has been over the last few years. Her decision to return to acting feels organic, even if Peter's decision to return to graduate school felt obligatory. As far as I can tell, Spencer has essentially put us somewhere around "Amazing Spider-Man" #360. If I recall correctly, the "mystery" of Peter's parents starts the following issue, and it's the revelation that his parents were just clones that pushes him over the edge, leading to his estrangement from Mary Jane. To me, it was the heyday of Spider-Man, full of six-part storylines like "Round Robin: The Sidekick's Revenge" or "The Return of the Sinister Six." As excited as I am for us to be back to this era, I'll also admit that it's weird that we're functionally just ignoring 30 years of continuity. Spencer is at least trying to make it feel like an organic progression; in that way, he's showing Joe Quesada how unnecessary the deal with Mephisto was. But, you have to wonder how far Spencer is going to go. Beyond alluding to Mary Jane's time as CEO of Stark Industries, are we going to get to the point where we really just ignore the last 30 years? With Peter starting graduate school again, are we eventually not even going to mention the plagiarism, Parker Industries, or even Horizon Labs? Is it just going to be 1992 all over again? As much as I'm not necessarily opposed to it, it seems a little extreme.
Avengers #21: This issue is fun, but not as fun as Aaron thinks it is. As much as I love Aaron, this series has been so schizophrenic that I think it's time that I focus my energies elsewhere.
Batman #74: The problem with intensely disliking a run is that it starts to get hard not to dislike it. You go into each issue ready to be mad, and it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I've long felt like I'm punishing myself reading this series. In fact, I've often wondered if King is mocking us with his repeated use of tropes, like Bill Watterson's discarded plan to make Calvin wordlessly get bigger and bigger for several weeks until readers finally had enough.
But, this arc had given me some hope. Although it makes no sense on the face of it, removing Bruce and Thomas from Gotham also removed us from some of the zanier aspects of the story that King has been telling. If you could get past the ridiculousness of them dragging Martha Wayne's body through the desert, it was a pretty standard Lazarus Pit story. But, that was a good thing, in my book. It meant that we could strip away all the aforementioned tropes -- the literary allusions that never seemed to match the actual story, the wordless panels that left you confused instead of intrigued, the surprise reveals that had no basis in the actual story that King was telling -- and just focus on Bruce and Thomas. I mean, that's a story. Bruce gets to spend time with his father. It's almost literally a story 80 years in the making.
I took a short-story class once where the instructor encouraged us to "kill our pretties," meaning the sentences that we thought were beautifully constructed but that didn't really fit the story. King just can't do that here. Bruce and Thomas complete their journey to the pit, where Bruce reveals that he buried his mother's body in the desert so Thomas couldn't exchange her life for the life of the al Ghul minion that Thomas captured earlier in the issue. Unlike other issues, King at least seems to be going in an interesting direction here. After all, the more Thomas talks about resurrecting Martha, the crazier he seems. After so many issues where Bruce has been portrayed as the insane one, King flips the camera somewhat, revealing Bruce as biding his time as he waits for an increasingly unhinged Thomas to make a mistake. This story is one I'd like to see King develop.
But, as usual, King instead spends most of his time quoting literature, burning up valuable space that he could've actually spent on plot development. To make matters worse, he goes self-referential, as he's re-quoting the fairy tale that he invented for Bruce and the KGBeast. King could've spent the time revealing how Thomas made it into our world or even how Bruce and Martha were killed in his world. King even has Thomas hint her death wasn't "easy," but refuses to elaborate. Instead, he repeats the details of the fairy tale twice in this issue and throws them into the pit. Even when I try to give him the benefit of the doubt, I feel like a fool in the end.
Thor #15: Only Jason Aaron could imagine such an amazing torture for Malekith. I was surprised in Karnilla that she had become so evil as to force Malekith to watch his war dogs devour his innocent self -- the boy corpse gatherer -- each day. But, I needn't be surprised, because Aaron is nothing if not dedicated to characterization. Instead, she damns Malekith to watch a world where his innocent self frolics all day surrounded by the war dogs...who've reverted to puppies. It's just so perfect, Malekith forced to consider a world where he never found his raison d'être: war. Chilling.
Also Read: Detective Comics #1,007; Black Cat #2; Star Wars #68; War of the Realms Omega #1
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