By: Mark Waid (writer), Paul Azaceta & Matthew Southworth (art), Javier Rodriguez (colors) & Joe Caramanga (letters)
The Story: The Finale of “Origin of the Species” sees Spidey trying to reclaim the baby Osborn from the Lizard.
What’s Good: It is hard to go too wrong having an issue featuring a fight amongst Spider-Man, the Lizard and Doc Ock. Those are two of the biggies in Spidey’s rogues gallery and they have both been rebooted recently and made much more interesting. It isn’t so much that the classic forms of these baddies were sub-par, but we’d seen them over-and-over and they’d gotten stale. So, it is nice to see strong editorial control maintaining the recent recharacterizations of Ock and Lizard despite the fact that creator duties on Amazing Spider-Man have been passed around a LOT over the last couple of years.
Additionally, we have a big change in this issue for Harry Osborn. It would be unfair to spoil the event, but it makes a property like Spider-Man more enjoyable when things like this happen to the supporting cast. Even though Spider-Man himself changes very little over the decades (OMD & OMIT notwithstanding), you can create the appearance of change by fiddling with villains and supporting cast. Bravo!
If you had to give a final word on Origin of the Species, it would be that it closed much stronger than it started. That’s both good and rare. Often story arcs start out very cool, but don’t end up with anything as meaningful (in its own small way) or fun as this issue (a three-way throw-down between Lizard, Ock and Spidey).
It isn’t clear who was doing what on the art duties, but the blending of Matthew Southworth with Paul Azaceta is a pretty good one. It a guess had to be made, it is that the heavily costumed portions of this title are by Azaceta (which is where he does his best work) and the unmasked faces are more Southworth (which is his forte). This Lizard isn’t quite as good as Chris Bachalo’s, but it is still pretty nice. All in all, it is a nice looking issue.
What’s Not So Good: No real, major complaints. In places the art gets a little dark, but they are underground for much of the issue.
Conclusion: The world is better when Spider-Man comics are good. This is the final issue before Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos take over ASM for the “Big Time” story line. Let’s have a round of applause for the creators and editors who made the thrice-monthly ASM (mostly) a huge success.
Grade: B+
– Dean Stell