Peter is (still) doing an apology tour and trying to get his life back together after being away in outer space. Daredevil tries to help Spidey evolve his Spider-Sense. Raelith the Wretched binges How I Met Your Mother(1). Spidey knowingly sets Robbie on a path where he will likely discover his secret identity. Brian reveals he has mushroom mind control powers and takes his revenge on Peter and his co-workers. All of this, plus … Peter’s mystery cousin meets Aunt May and Big Ric???
(Anyone ever read Come Into My Cellar by Ray Bradbury? A great short story about an alien invasion by … mushrooms.)
CREDITS
Writer: Joe Kelly
Guest Artist: Pete Woods
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagna
PREVIOUSLY IN AMAZING SPIDER-MAN …
Spidey helps out his past self (from the Eight Deaths of Spider-Man story). Raelith the Wretched is cured of her Earth diseases, meaning she, Glitch and Symbie can move into Peter’s apartment. Brian is hearing voices and turning into a giant mushroom. Peter gets suspended from his job due to Ben Reilly sabotaging Brian’s code (with some questionable HTML). Spidey meets Kintsugi and learns his motivation and the origin of his name.
PREVIOUSLY IN AMAZING SPIDER-MAN/VENOM DEATH SPIRAL BODY COUNT…
Torment is revealed to be Graham, some random guy who had a big family and has the ability to see connections between members of a family. His girlfriend Laura had a terrible family so he decided the best thing for her was to kill her family (she did not take that well). He reveals to Rory Conway(2) – his latest victim – that he chooses people under a lot of pressure from their family and kills their family to help them. Out of nowhere, “Mr. Redman” messages Torment and tells him that Spider-Man is Peter Parker (Is some connection between Torment and Spidey/Venom revealed here? Of course not, that would make sense) In the present, Graham is still dead and his family is at his funeral, knowing that he was Torment. His younger sister (?), Susie, is revealed to have the same “family connection” powers as Graham.
SUMMARY
Peter is (still) taking some time to put his personal life back together after being away in space and ghosting everyone while Ben Reilly was impersonating him.
(Even Kelly can’t pretend to care about Shay. And what is everyone’s guess for the anonymous texter?)
That evening Spidey takes some time to train with Daredevil, who tries to get him to use his Spider-Sense to avoid a non-dangerous beam of light. DD’s senses that Peter’s Semispinalis Capitis(3) muscle could tell the light was coming before DD turned on the light, even though Spidey’s Spider-Sense didn’t detect it. He thinks that Peter is limiting his Spider-Sense. Spidey wonders if he can expand it.
(I love me a 2-page spread, and I love multiple-Spideys in the same panel, so more of this please.)
Brian is at his apartment, hiding from everyone, and talking to Astrid on the phone, telling her that he isn’t coming back to work soon. His apartment is full of spores and mushrooms, and Astrid tells him that Peter is on leave. Brian cuts off his finger with scissors and it grows back as he tells Astrid he’ll be back at work tomorrow.
(Ouch, that’s gotta … actually it looked like that didn’t hurt Brian at all.)
Peter is at his apartment with Glitch, Raelith the Wretched, and Symbie, who are living with him. Peter tries to see if Glitch can improve his webshooters but Glitch says they don’t need improvement, while Raelith watches TV, and Symbie makes a nuisance of himself.
(I can’t wait for Raelith the Wretched to look like the humans in Wall-E after weeks of eating junk food and watching TV.)
At the Daily Bugle, Spidey is meeting with Robbie, who reveals he is prediabetic(4). Spidey asks him to help find his cousin, whom he found out about while fighting Torment. He tells Robbie that Torment chose his victims through family ties(5), which Robbie did not know, and that his cousin might still be a target. Robbie says that if he helps Spidey, it might lead to him finding out Spidey’s identity, which Spidey is aware of.
(“If you ask me to do this, you realize I’ll probably figure out your secret identity.” “Huh, what, did you say something?” “Never mind.”)
Peter gets a voicemail from Dr. O-M to meet him to discuss Brian’s accident. He realizes this will cause him to break his promise to Aunt May to help clean up FEAST (from the damage caused during Death Spiral).
At FEAST, May and Ric are cleaning up when a stranger shows up to help. May says he reminds her of someone, and he introduces himself as Mac.
(What is the deal with this paint roller? We focus on it more than once here, plus the stain it makes. Am I missing something?)
Peter shows up at the address Dr. O-M sent him, which is Whimsy’s Wonderland Pizza Adventure(6). Brian greets him and takes him inside, revealing that the location for this meeting was his idea.
(This looks like someone you can trust completely.)
Inside Peter sees Dr. O-M, Astrid, and other Rand employees dancing and held motionless. Brian reveals that he has mind control powers now, and breathes spores onto Peter’s face. Brian asks him why he sabotaged the experiment, and Peter can’t help but tell the truth – that it was his clone, Ben Reilly.
Brian doesn’t believe him and thinks he’s still figuring out how to use his powers correctly. He says that he’s using mycorrhizal associations(7) which allows him to use spores to communicate with other species, in this case, mind control people. He reveals that Astrid and Dr. O-M showed him the accident investigation files, which put the blame on Peter. He asks Peter to explain why he sabotaged him.
(If you watch Survivor, the last 2 seasons have had a player named Rizo who calls himself “the RizGod”. This is Brian to me now.)
The spores make Peter want to tell Brian everything, including that he’s Spider-Man. Brian demands to know why Peter ruined his work and tried to kill him. Peter regains control for a moment and punches Brian, with a hit that would kill a normal man. Peter is distraught, but sees that Brian is ok, the left side of his face is gone but is already reforming.
(I feel like Kelly came up with the “I’m a Fun … Guy” pun and worked backwards from there to invent Spore’s powers.)
TO BE CONTINUED!
INITIAL RESPONSE
We all knew that when Kelly introduced Brian, this childhood friend of Peter’s that we’d never heard of before, he’d eventually become a supervillain. And here it finally is.
(I’m only surprised that Kelly waited this long after introducing Brian to make him a supervillain.)
Something like this *can* work … if you make us care about the character. But so far in Kelly’s run, Brian just hasn’t been that important. Or interesting. So I don’t really care that this is happening to him. Or that he’s become a supervillain. Or that he’s actually a victim of Ben Reilly’s … incompetence? Petulance? Dickishness?
Brian’s powers are potentially interesting, so we’ll see what happens in his first actual fight next issue. But this issue is all setup for this story (with some sub-plots sprinkled in here and there).
WHAT I LIKED
Spidey and Daredevil are always a great team-up, and I enjoyed them here training together, with DD using his enhanced senses to give Spidey information about his Spider-Sense.
(Man, I’ve missed Spidey and DD/Peter and Matt just hanging out.)
Likewise, it was nice to see Spidey and Robbie just having a conversation – I can’t remember the last time we saw that. And having Robbie investigate the mystery of Peter’s mystery cousin makes sense because he is a (former) reporter. The idea that Spidey knows that having Robbie look into this may lead him to figure out his secret identity is interesting since many of us have said for years that Robbie should already know (or suspect).
(May we all be as happy as Robbie appears to be eating that cookie.)
I really like the art in this issue. I especially liked when we got the spores and psychedelic images inside Brian’s trap. There was something about the look of this art that was familiar and I couldn’t put my finger on it, and then I realized … it reminds me of a book that is adapting a cartoon and is trying to keep the style from the cartoon. I can’t think of a specific book that this is from but that’s what came into my head.
(Peter is literally on mushrooms here.)
WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE
Peter is *still* trying to get his life back together. Yes, Peter is always having trouble with his personal life, but this is him cleaning up his life after being in space. Didn’t we already have him doing this in a previous issue before Death Spiral?
I would like Peter trying to evolve his Spider-Sense on his own and not part of his need to make himself “stronger” to deal with Hellgate. Hey, whatever happened to that guy? Wasn’t his planet about to be destroyed and they needed Spidey’s help to save it? Pretty thoughtful of whoever was going to destroy it (at this point I literally can’t remember what the threat was) being so patient and waiting this long.
(“I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, and doggone it, people don’t like me!”)
Glitch, Raelith the Wretched, and Symbie living with Peter. I’m predisposed to kind of like Glitch because I was a fan of Warlock in the New Mutants. But Raelith the Wretched and Symbie are just sinkholes of disinterest every time they appear. How much longer can they be living with Peter before someone in his life realizes “Hey, you have aliens living with you, what’s up with that?”
(If anyone really likes these three and them living with Peter, let me know. I just want to know that you exist.)
While I like the idea of Spidey going to Robbie for help, how does he think this is going to end? If Robbie is successful in finding this cousin, he is obviously going to discover their family members, and see that they are related to Peter. If you’re going to ask Robbie to do this, why not first reveal your identity to him? It’s actually kind of dumb for Spidey to ask Robbie to do this and then hope he doesn’t discover your secret identity, shrugging and saying “Whatever happens … happens”. Either he won’t find the cousin, or he’ll find him and learn the secret identity. Couldn’t “Peter” have gone to Robbie instead of “Spidey” and come up with a story about a mystery cousin that Torment targeted and ask Robbie to find him?
Peter can’t help May out with cleaning up FEAST, but this time it’s not his Spider-Man life interfering with his personal life. As far as he knows, this is his boss asking him to meet with her for a valid work reason. He has a legitimate reason for not keeping his promise to May. He should call her up and say “I’m sorry, I promised I would come over and help you but my boss just called and wants to see me.” This is a excuse that even Big Ric would accept. But Kelly just wants Peter to keep looking unreliable to Big Ric.
(It’s like Nathan Lubensky’s ghost said “Of all of May’s suitors I was the most unlikable to Peter” and Big Ric said “Hold my Maalox.”)
The mystery cousin (who has a name now, Cormac Crane) shows up and instead of introducing himself to May like a normal person would who found out that he has relatives he never knew about, he doesn’t tell her who he is. Why not just introduce yourself?
Brian (aka Spore). We all knew this was coming, but here he is, Peter’s childhood friend is now a villain who hates him. His powers are different, but like Venom, his origin has lots of problems. Why did Ben Reilly sabotage Brian’s research? He had to know that this might cause an accident and hurt someone, he was pretending to be Peter and *improve* his life, so why go out of his way to do this to Peter/Brian? And like Eddie, he’s blaming Peter for something that was his own fault – Eddie was guilty of bad journalism that caused him to be fired, and Brian did an experiment alone without authorization or backup. Yes, Ben sabotaged the code, but it was Brian’s fault for doing the experiment when he was told not to, and not having someone else there who might have caught the sabotage. So it’s hard for me to feel sorry for him, or care about what’s happening to him.
(“It’s your fault this happened to me Peter! Yes, I did an experiment alone and without permission, but it’s all your fault!”)
WHAT THIS ISSUE MEANT OVERALL
Well, it’s the beginning of the next story, and it’s all about Spore. This issue actually had an old-school feel – the introduction of a new villain, and various sub-plots. The problem is that I don’t care about Brian. I might care about Spore, but that depends on seeing the rest of his abilities in action.
GRADE
C
It’s a quiet issue with not much action, but it’s part one of a new story so that’s to be expected. There’s some good stuff in here, but I just don’t care about the new villain (so far). We’ll get to see the full range of his powers next issue (I assume) but for now it looks like his entire motivation is “Peter sabotaged my code and almost killed me, even though I did an unauthorized experiment and it’s really my own fault”.
NEXT TIME, IN AN ALL-NEW ISSUE OF AMAZING SPIDER-MAN …
(The fact that this version of Spore is still wearing Brian’s “rizz” suit from the end of this issue makes me laugh.)
ADDENDUM
I came up with the title of this review weeks ago when I realized that I would be reviewing the first issue of Spore. It was the lowest of all possible low-hanging fruit.
FOOTNOTES
(1) Someone tell her to stop at the end of season 8.
(2) This has to be a Gerry Conway tribute, right?.
(3) According to Google, “The semispinalis capitis is a long, thick muscle located at the back of the neck. It is part of the deep transversospinal muscle layer and is primarily responsible for extending, rotating, and laterally flexing the head.”
(4) According to (yep, you guessed it) Google, “Prediabetes means your blood sugar levels are higher than normal but not high enough to be classified as Type 2 diabetes. It indicates a high risk for developing Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. The good news is that prediabetes is often reversible through lifestyle changes.”
(5) Not this kind:
(6) Not a real place.
(7) According to (why even ask at this point) Google, “Mycorrhizal associations are vital symbiotic relationships between soil fungi and plant roots, where the fungus enhances water and nutrient uptake (especially phosphorus) in exchange for plant-produced sugars. These associations, present in most vascular plants, improve plant growth, disease resistance, and soil structure, acting as an essential, widespread underground support network.”
