 |
| THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN No. 15, April 2015 |
Despite partially making good
on the promise that Issue Fifteen of “The Amazing Spider-Man” would wrap up all the
loose ends created during the multi-issue ‘Spider-Verse’ event, “Epilogue”
still proves to be a rather unsatisfactory and somewhat confusing comic book.
For starters the tone of the narrative is a rather sickly sweet one, with the
numerous spider-people seemingly spending panel after panel saying warm
heartfelt goodbyes to one another before returning to their place within the
multi-verse.
Considering the wanton death and destruction which has preceded
their ‘victory’ over the Inheritors such humorously scripted departures simply
come across as being ‘too good to be true’ and insincere considering the loss
of life. Certainly May Parker’s return to Earth-982 and discovery that both her
boyfriend and mother, Mary Jane, are still alive is utterly unbelievable. As
Spider-Girl says “It’s like a miracle! Like magic.” Either that or an
incredibly poor decision by writer Dan Slott to erase much of the pain and
adversity which a once interesting character continually fought against.
Fortunately the American author stops just short of May’s father also surviving
the onslaught of Daemos. But he does create a ‘surrogate’ (grand) father for
the heroine’s family in the form of Uncle Ben from Earth-3145.
The highly
anticipated rematch between Peter Parker and Otto Octavius is also as
disappointing as its inclusion is unsurprising. Rather bewilderingly the
Superior Spider-Man seems to think that destroying the Fabric of Reality and
subsequently ‘blinking out of existence’ is a preferable fate to resuming his
career as a crime-fighter on Earth-616; albeit a relatively short-lived one. How
does destroying “whole worlds” make the rehabilitated former ‘mad scientist’ believe he is the
better Web-head? That is the thinking of the evil-hearted super-villain Doctor
Octopus not the hero he has supposedly become. Not even an arrogant one.
Perhaps more crucially however is
just why, when arguably the ‘spider-army’ are facing an even greater threat
than the Inheritors, as the great Web of Life is being destroyed, do they
decide to reduce their few numbers even further by allowing Spider-Man 2099 and
Spider-Gwen to teleport home? If every second allows Octavius time to cut
another strand and terminate another entire universe, wouldn’t the super-heroes launch
an immediate all-out attack upon him? Why would they squander precious time
debating who can leave and who can stay… and have the comic waste a page
depicting Miguel O’Hara explaining to Gwen Stacy that he knows in the end ‘the
good guys win’?
Fortunately, despite the rather uninspiring events depicted
within this issue’s twenty pages, artist Giuseppe Camuncoli provides some
competently strong pencilling throughout, especially when drawing the
confrontation between Superior Spider-Man and the Earth-616 wall-crawlers up
upon the Great Web.
 |
| The variant cover art of "THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN" No. 15 by Simone Bianchi |
No comments:
Post a Comment