Amazing Spider-Man #2 Review: A Surprising Character From Spider-Man’s Past Returns

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The following contains spoilers for Amazing Spider-Man #2, on sale now from Marvel Comics.

I have a feature called I’ve Been Here Before, which is about what I call “nepotistic continuity,” which refers to the way that comic book writers sometimes evoke their past work in their later work. It’s not an insult, it’s just interesting. In the first issue of this new run, Joe Kelly made reference to his acclaimed work with the Rhino in his first time working on Amazing Spider-Man as a member of the “Brain Trust” (a group of writers who would rotate story arcs until finally Marvel decided to just make one of the members of the group, Dan Slott, the sole writer on the series after about 100 issues of sharing the book together), and now, we see Joe Kelly returning to his work on Spider-Man/Dedpool for a major character in the series.

Amazing Spider-Man #2 is from writer Joe Kelly, artist Pepe Larraz, colorists Marte Gracia, and letterer Joe Caramagna, and picks up from where the last issue left off, with Spider-Man investigating the Rhino’s apartment after the villain went on a mad rampage in New York City, and then had a heart attack. A mysterious villain was talking to the Hobgoblin, and apparently the Rhino was given SOME sort of drug, which causes him to go on the rampage (and give him the heart attack, which was intended to kill him, but Spider-Man saved him with some super-strength CPR). Spider-Man was doused with the drug himself at the end of the issue, and sees all of his supervillains attacking him at once.

What is the major problem for Spider-Man in this issue?

Pepe Larraz and Marte Gracia are an excellent team, and this is especially true when they’re doing action sequences, and so Joe Kelly smartly comes up with a plotline that causes Spider-Man to hallucinate throughout the issue, which allows Larraz and Gracia to do these AMAZING action sequences as Spider-Man is attacked by villains through his hallucinations.

And, of course, this leads to all sorts of problems for Spider-Man throughout the issue, both AS Spider-Man (as there’s video of him basically going berserk fighting creatures that aren’t there) AND as Peter Parker, as he has just started a new job (secured for him by an old childhood friend) and he is still losing time during the day due to the hallucinations. Honestly, it sort of reminds me of a classic debate that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko had back in the early days of Spider-Man, where Lee would be constantly pushing Ditko to have more action in the comic, and Ditko wanted to spotlight Peter Parker more, and that was led to the iconic “half-Spider-Man-mask” look that Ditko did, as it was his way to tell Lee, “Here, he’s sort of Spider-Man on the page.” Similarly, Spider-Man’s hallucinations allow Larraz to do some cool action shots throughout the issue as Spidey hallucinates.

In my Comic Book Legends Revealed column, a common thing I run into is the whole “telephone game” problem, where one person misinterprets something, and then someone else repeats it, and so on and so forth, until a whole legend has formed. Something along those lines has happened with Peter’s love life in this comic. You see, when describing Joe Kelly’s run, it was noted that it was “packed with exciting developments in the life of Peter Parker, including new career aspects, a promising romance, AND the introduction of an all-new supervillain!” That was translated by a number of sites (including, admittedly, CBR) as them saying Kelly was going to introduce a new romance for Peter, but in actuality, he’s just referring to Shay, Peter’s still relatively new girlfriend, who was introduced towards the end of Zeb Wells’ run on Amazing Spider-Man. That’s really neither here nor there for the sake of this interview, I just found it interesting.

Who is the character that returns from Spider-Man/Deadpool?

One of the cool things about the hallucinations is that Kelly gets to bring into “reality” the classic “Peter sees people talking to him” stuff that Ditko and Lee used so much, only here, Peter is ACTUALLY seeing these past interactions, and it’s a fun look back at Peter’s old relationship with his childhood friend, who Peter liked because, well, Peter didn’t have many friends, but he was also obviously a terrible influence, and it’ll be interesting to see how things go in the present day.

Anyhow, at the end of the issue, we learn that the villain behind the gas is Itsy-Bitsy, a character who was a combination of Spider-Man and Deadpool in Joe Kelly’s Spider-Man/Deadpool series (to mark how Kelly is one of the most famous Deadpool writers ever, and so following his Amazing Spider-Man stint, he launched a Spider-Man/Deadpool series with his old Deadpool collaborator, Ed McGuinness). Itsty-Bitsy was trying to become a hero, but a hero who killed, and that was not what Spider-Man and Deadpool were about at the time (Deadpool had promised Spider-Man that he would stop killing). Itsy-Bitsy began killing in Spider-Man and Deadpool’s name, which obviously freaked Spider-Man out. He did everything he could to stop her, including trying to kill her himself (which was, yes, kind of ironic). Ultimately, he couldn’t, but Deadpool DID. However, after she was seemingly killed, we saw that she survived as a small spider version of herself, and obviously, over time, she has grown back to normal size.

She is trying to kill Rhino, but, well, I assume we’ll see Spider-Man trying to deal with that next issue (while also, you know, dealing with all of the hallucinations).

This was a very interesting follow-up to #1, and Itsy-Bitsy is an intriguing villain for Spider-Man to face (as she’s a little bit him and a little bit Deadpool, which is a heck of a mix).

Source: Marvel

“}]] In a CBR review of Amazing Spider-Man #2, see how a surprising character from Spider-Man’s past has returned in this new run  Read More