The Amazing Spider-Man [2015] #22 - Marvel Comics

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN No. 22, February 2017

Selling an arguably disappointing 63,359 copies, considering it was a close tie-in to its Berkeley-born writer’s 2016 “Spider-Man event of the year” mini-series, “The Clone Conspiracy”, this twenty-page periodical’s audience probably weren’t anywhere near as “excited to get my copies… each and every month” as Associate Editor Devin Lewis. For whilst this publication certainly provides plenty of detail as to just how Ben Reilly is once again alive and well within the ‘Marvel Universe’ following his disintegration at the hands of the “original Green Goblin” twenty years earlier, Dan Slott’s explanation is so pedantically-paced that many readers surely felt that they too were being repeatedly experimented upon by Miles Warren with every passing panel; “I knew they that soon there’d be nothing left. Just a nonstop existence of pain and suffering.”  

Indeed, for those bibliophiles who either inadvertently overlooked purchasing Issue Twenty Two of “The Amazing Spider-Man”, or rather perceptively deduced that the best thing about the comic was its haunting Alex Ross cover illustration and gave the magazine a miss, they can be reassured that absolutely nothing of any real importance occurs within “Seeing Red”, apart from perhaps the book’s final act which depicts Parker being contrivingly enticed to work with “Peter’s own clone” in order to receive “the ultimate gift… bringing back Uncle Ben!” Certainly any followers of the “Dead No More” story-arc could readily 'skip' this particular instalment and thereby save themselves the trauma of endlessly reading about the Jackal cold-bloodily murdering his captive clone “twenty-seven times” using such nauseating methods as electrocution, drowning, freezing, toxic gas, acid, and immolation… 

Perhaps aghast at such a strung out script, Giuseppe Camuncoli seemingly provides some remarkably unexceptional breakdowns for this particular publication, with the Italian’s drawings of Reilly being firmly held within Warren’s secret laboratory appearing particularly angular, sedentary and unremarkable. In fact, despite being “best known for his work on the Marvel Comics title… The Superior Spider-Man”, this magazine’s most memorable moment must be the penciller’s attempt to imitate Steve Ditko’s incredibly youthful incarceration of the web-spinner “growing up in Forest Hills, with Aunt May and Uncle Ben” and then later fighting Mysterio during “those early days as Spider-Man”, rather than his own attempt to deliver something new to the artistic aesthetics of the titular character.

Writers: Dan Slott & Christos Gage, Artist: Giuseppe Camuncoli, and Inker: Cam Smith