Thursday, April 5, 2012

Amazing Spider-Man: Ends Of The Earth

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if Spider-Man lead the Avengers? Neither have I, but apparently ASM (Amazing Spider-Man) writer, Dan Slott has. I freely admit that I haven't been following the wall-crawler for a while. With that being said, Slott has been showing us a ridiculous amount of awesomeness in these last two issues of ASM, #s 682 & 683. If you need a refresher for the story so far, here goes nothin'! (Spoiler alert!)

As a researcher at Horizon Labs, Peter Parker, also known as your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, has been developing items to aid in his battles with the Sinister Six. That comes in handy when a dying Doctor Octopus uses his newly developed "Octavian Lens" wreak havoc on the entire Western Hemisphere. After this, he reverses the effect, in essence playing both sides of the game. During this time, Spider-Man dons his new armor and assembles Earth's Mightiest Heroes. So, that's basically part 1.

Part 2 begins with the members of the Sinister Six grabbing items for Doc Ock in order to further his master plan. During this time, a G8 summit convenes in Rome to focus on the events in ASM #682. The American attendees happened to include some rather notable faces. The wall-crawler crashes the summit, with Thor and Captain America in tow. Spider-Man assembles the Avengers and prepares for, in his own words, "The Earth's Mightiest Smack Down." To figure out how 8 Avengers square off against 6 of Spidey's rogues gallery, go out and buy the issues. You won't be sorry.

As mentioned, Dan Slott's writing is pretty good. There are no bad transitions, wasted words or lack of quotable lines. It's a good read and a great jumping-on point. It's not missing much in terms of story. Nor is Stefano Casselli's artwork. I don't recall much of his previous work, though I will certainly be following it from now on. With a cool new costume, Casselli has his work cut out for him, especially if he plans for us to ever see this again. Frankly, that probably won't happen.

As I said, I just got back into Spidey, but if these two keep it up, I plan to keep reading it. It's cool, but I just wasn't quite a fan of how quickly the fighting ended. That was the only real downside. With that being said, I hope this duo will accept the honor of an 8.5 out of 10.

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