By: Dan Slott (writer), Humberto Ramos (pencils), Carlos Cuevas & Victor Olazaba (inks), Edgar Delgado (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Ellie Pyle (assistant editor) & Stephen Wacker (editor)
The Story: Does Spider-Man need a little something extra now that he’s lost his spider sense?
What’s Good: The Slott/Ramos team kicked off the “Big Time” arc for Amazing Spider-Man with issues #648, #649, #650 and #651 which were all outstanding issues. So, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that putting those two back together leads to a pretty sweet product for Free Comic Book Day. What they have generated is a comic that will be friendly both to the person who just came to FCBD and hasn’t been in a comic shop in years AND a comic that is pretty important to what Spidey is up to week-to-week.
It all starts with the recap page. It is great that Marvel does these recap pages because it can be pretty easy to forget plot points OR just to need a general intro to the story if you’re new. But, the one thing that ASM always does (presumably because editor Stephen Wacker wants it this way) is present the recap in a quicker format than in 3-4 long and boring paragraphs of text. Here, we have Spidey telling us the story in 5 word balloons. Brilliant! This is great because it gives the reader the story and pulls them into a comic reading tempo in a way that blocks of text cannot do.
The story itself is pretty fun. We start by joining a Spidey / Spider-Woman fight in mid-battle. What’s this? Why are two Avengers fighting? Well, it’s because she is under the control of the Mandrill and his pheromones. This whole scene has typically jaunty Slott writing and he comes up with a neat way to beat the Mandrill that is (a) effective, (b) typically embarrassing for Spidey and (c) establishes a running joke throughout the issue. While this fight is going on, the pair are observed by Madame Web and Shang-Chi (a.k.a. Master of Kung-Fu). They observe that while Spider-Woman clearly has been trained in multiple fighting styles, that Spidey is just fast and strong; and now — without his spider-sense — he is at a huge disadvantage.
So, the second act of the issue shows Shang-Chi instructing Spider-Man in the ways of Kung Fu and also begins to tease the upcoming Spider-Island mega-story. By doing this, Marvel is giving everyone a lot of things to look forward to. Wanna see Spidey doing some tight martial art action scenes? I’m sure that’s coming up.
Ramos is one of the better artists working in comics today. He does a great job with the basics of “how to tell a comic story” and it is always clear who is in the panel, where the action takes place and what is going on. His cartooning style really helps with this because by not limiting himself to completely realistic anatomy, he can accentuate things to tell the story that he is after. Another Ramos trademark is that he never wastes objects such as Spider-Woman’s hair or Shang-Chi’s sash that can billow to indicate motion, but he doesn’t overdue it and have sashes flapping around when characters are at rest. I’ll also give Slott a little kudo for the art as I think he is very good as serving up meatballs to his artists because his comics are always well drawn.
What’s Not So Good: These are minor picky things, but there are a few little problems. For one, even though the Mandrill’s powers are pretty well explained, he’s kinda an obscure villain for Free Comic Book Day, huh?
And, the only other thing is that every time I laud Ramos’ art, there is always someone who says that they don’t like “that anime art style”. All I can say is that art is pretty personal in terms of what you like and what you don’t, but that you’re really missing out if you dismiss this art off-hand for that reason (not to mention that I don’t think it looks very anime).
Conclusion: In a perfect world, Humberto Ramos could draw two complete issues of Spider-Man a month and he and Dan Slott could just do this title for a few years because they are a perfect combination for ASM: fun, funny, action based, etc. This is a great issue that I and many other people got for free that was good enough that (a) I reviewed it without really having any previous plans to do so and (b) was my “pick of the week”. See if you can track down a copy.
Grade: A
-Dean Stell
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