The Amazing Spider-Man #789 - Marvel Comics

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN No. 789, December 2017

Despite being the third best-selling comic of October 2017, shifting an astonishing 110,349 copies, Dan Slott’s less than memorable script for “Top To Bottom” arguably must have struck many of its bemused readers as a genuinely lack-lustre affair which focuses far more upon the downfall of the major tech company’s founder and Chief Executive Officer, Peter Parker, than it does his web-slinging alter-ego. Indeed, with the exception of a terribly contrived confrontation with the Griffin, which genuinely appears to have been ‘crowbarred’ into the book’s sedentary ‘soap-opera’ script simply to ensure the titular character actually makes a fleeting appearance within his own title, this opening instalment to the Berkeley-born writer’s “Fall Of Parker” story-arc relies almost entirely upon endless contemplative, self-pitying exposition and heated debates or discussions; “Well, what are you looking at? What do you think I am? Some kind of jerk or something?”

Admittedly, such slow-paced, somewhat sentimental insights into the crime-fighting super-hero’s meteoritic decline would be perfectly palatable in small doses, and actually go a long way to helping shape the future of the New York-based publisher’s “company mascot” now he’s no longer financially able to summon the sort of formidably-powerful technological armaments he once did in order to invade Symkaria and thwart Norman Osborn. But that doesn’t mean the Eisner Award-winner needed to ‘pad out’ almost an entire book with a dejected Spidey slobbing like a couch potato within the apartment of Bobbi Morse, or later looking vain and stupid in front of the entire Daily Bugle staff when he arrogantly chides Joe Robertson for quite correctly publically declaring him a “threat or menace” in the editor's newspaper.

Fortunately however, Johnny Horton’s aforementioned brief appearance does at least provide a modicum of entertainment, even if the one-time Master of Evil has stooped so low as to be simply “robbing food trucks now” as opposed to “banks, or jewellery stores, or armoured cars”. In fact, any readers who thought Spider-Man’s fortunes had soured under the Berkeley-born writer’s pen, need only look at the apparent fate of the experimental mutagenic serum-enhanced criminal to realise just how much further the empanadas-thieving former “King Of The Beasts” had sunk since “that big energy bubble went up over the city” courtesy of Doctor Octopus.

Regular penciller Stuart Immonen also steps up his game once the super-humanly strong winged villain momentarily takes centre-stage, and produces some genuinely pulse-pounding panels in his depiction of Mockingbird shocking the lion-headed beast with her battle-staves, as well as the wall-crawler subsequently vying for control of a hefty food truck in order to ensure that it, and its owner’s livelihood, is saved.

The regular cover art of "THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN" No. 789 by Alex Ross