In the last, two-issue arc, Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four traveled to another dimension, and now it turns out two months have passed. While the difference in time passage is a convenient way to self-contain a story and minimize overall continuity impact, Amazing Spider-Man’s Brand New Day schedule that has more than a half-dozen major storylines overlapping across three issues per month makes a time jump like this inherently disruptive. It forces the creatives to break the cardinal rule of writing, which is “show don’t tell.”
In addition to a few pages of exposition inside the book proper, the “summary” DB! splash page instead catches us all up on what’s happened over the last 60 days. As readers, we don’t get to see this. Doesn’t this undermine the whole “Brand New Day” strategy of making Spider-Man’s universe easier to follow? Surely the other creative teams could have covered these two months and given readers a look at what happened while Spidey was away?
Anyway, enough about that. This story, apart from the 2-month thing, is pretty fun. Pete gets a new roommate. Mayor J. Jonah works through his daddy issues with his actual daddy, who ran out on the family when JJJ was a just a kid. Oh, and JJJ Senior is dating Aunt May, so there’s that.
JJJ also creates a new branch of the NYPD called the “Anti-Spider Squad” who will be devoted, all day every day, to finding and capturing Spider-Man. In response, Pete decides to drive Jonah nuts “24-7.” That explains the cover to #592, eh?
He stops robberies. He saves cats from trees. He rescues people in car accidents. It gets to the point where, when the ASS (that acronym for “Anti-Spider Squad” HAS GOT to have been intentional, right?) is able to temporarily restrain Spidey, the citizens of New York step in to help him escape.
And then comes the main villain for this arc: Vulture.
Only he’s red!
Yes, there’s a new Vulture in town. And he eats people. And his wings are actual wings, not a battle suit. He also spits venom, which blinds our hero and forces him to take a page from Daredevil’s playbook and use his other senses, including his spider sense.
After forcing Vulture to retreat, Spider-Man goes home.
He stinks from running around for days on end, so he tosses off his damaged costume to go hit the shower…
…Where he meets his new roommate for the first time. She’s the sister of his official roommate, who is in prison for trying to frame Spider-Man in a spate of murders. Leave it to Mark Waid to write charming scenes about Peter Parker’s nudity.
We learn from the real Vulture, who is in prison, that the new one was scientifically altered by the Mafia and now he’s eating criminals to get revenge.
In their rematch, Spidey does something we don’t see him do very often: He intentionally breaks the Vulture’s arms.
This happens at a big ball game and the citizens of New York end up all mad at Spider-Man because the fight ruined the event. That’s a little silly, but it’s Waid’s version of the “Parker Luck” and I’ll give it a pass.
In the end, we see Spider-Man realizing that his “24-7” run wasn’t really about driving Jonah nuts, it was in response to his worse enemy, Norman Osborn, now being one of the most powerful men in the world. This is a nice parallel to Peter Parker’s foil, J. Jonah, dealing with his daddy issues. It’s also set-up for the next arc, where Spider-Man will go after Osborn. (Note about the Dark Reign era: Almost every hero in every series decides “Now I’m going after Osborn!” It’s pretty samey samey.)
In all, a well-done tale. Editorial note: It’s very odd that the new Vulture doesn’t appear on any of the covers to this story.
English (US) · 