Amazing Spider Man

Amazing Spider-Man is a title that’s been pretty polarized for a while now. Either the fans have been displeased with its direction, or its EIC has been displeased with it. What the latter of those two did was create Brand New Day, and make ASM a 3-times a month comic.

In premise, the changes made to Spider-Man’s status quo was pretty ludicrous; having the devil just magically wipe away 30 years of continuity just so it can once again appear as though Peter Parker is just some young, happening bachelor… It just struck me as overly pointless, and poorly conceived.

That aside, I went into BND with an open mind, and even a hope, to thoroughly enjoy these new style Spider-Man stories. Has that been the case? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Truthfully, there have been some REALLY good issues of ASM, and some REALLY good arcs. With great writing and art to boot. Unfortunately, between those great stories, there always seems to be 3-4 clunkers that seem to do little but serve as filler until the next great Spider-Man story. This is made worse, I think, by having way too many artistic hands in the pot; one week, it’s John Romita Jr., the next Marcos Martin, the next Mike Mckone.

Now, I like all of those guys’ art, but go back and forth between the three…plus more fill in artists…its simply jarring. Made even worse by the fact the writers rotate just as often. Creating an even more turbulent style and level of quality for the book.

All in all, the good stories out number the bad. And all in all, its been a fun ride. But, I really can’t help but think, that Spider-Man would have been much better served with 3 separate titles, with 3 separate, equally talented, creative teams, who could tell their own stories completely, without having to rotate every other week.

Oh, well, maybe I’m being picky. Or maybe Marvel just tried a little too hard to make Spider-Man comics interesting again.

if you have jumped off of ASM with brand new day, please do yourself a favor and pick it back up! this is the best spidey has been in years. slott has been doing an amazing job and ramos’s art is fantastic!

the new direction is a blast and i hope the current team has a really long run on the title.