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| THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN No. 2, July 2014 |
It is rather hard to shake off the feeling that
both writer Dan Slott and artist Humberto Ramos simply adhered to a well-tested
but (overly) tried formula of heavy dialogue with minimal action, whilst
producing this issue of “The Amazing Spider-Man”. Almost as if, exhausted from previously
creating “The best-selling comic of the Twenty-First Century”, at least
according to Diamond Comic Distributors, the creative team decided to simply
‘go through the motions’ whilst crafting this subsequent edition.
For despite
the front cover’s promise of some high-octane action between two long-standing
arch-rivals, and a fancy artistic electrical light-show to boot, practically
nothing of any interest or significance takes place within this magazine until towards
its end… And then of those four pages depicting Web-head battling an incensed Electro,
three of them are actually concerned with the combatants either just conversing
or ineptly flailing around a malfunctioning water-hydrant; courtesy of the
Black Cat’s bad luck powers.
As a result any anticipation generated by the
American writer as to this anti-climactic confrontation is woefully wasted. Albeit
Slott’s attempt to engender such expectation and motivation simply consists of Max
Dillon paying an ill-advised visit on his ‘good friend’ Francine and inadvertently
electrocuting her because the Superior Spider-Man has intensified his super-powers.
Indeed this book contains nothing but similarly small cut-scenes, scattered
throughout the pages in a seemingly haphazard order. One moment Slott provides
a brief glimpse of Silk in her “room with no windows”, then has Peter Parker
explaining to Anna Maria Marconi that he had his mind swapped with Doctor
Octopus, then Electro visits the West Village, then Spidey attends Avengers
Tower, then Peter at Parker Industries, then back to the West Village, then back
to Parker Industries… etc etc.
Perhaps dizzy as a result of so many shifts back
and forth between locations, Ramos’ drawings are equally as inconsistent, especially
when it comes to his illustrations of Peter Parker and some competent but still
rather plain-looking crowd scenes. The Mexican penciller is famous for the
stylised cartoony feel of his artwork but on this issue there seems to be numerous
panels where his technique looks awkward, overly-exaggerated and at times, such
as Spider-Man flooring Captain America, just plain wrong.
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| The variant cover art of "THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN" No. 2 by Mike Deodato |
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