Comic Review #53: Spider Man #96-97, Spectacular Spider Man #262-263, Amazing Spider-Man #440-441, Sensational Spider-Man #32-33 (The Gathering of Five, The Final Chapter)

 

Our Little lookback at the comics I owned as a kid has ended. I mean our first lookback. I'm sure I will be looking at many comics I had as a kid and will probably mention that in the article. I enjoyed the last few Comic Reviews quite a bit. It was a bit of nostalgic fun, but now it's time to get back to comics I haven't read before or I hear are weird/stupid or both! Anyway I felt the best way I could end this little retrospective was to talk about the dumbest fucking comic book story I have ever read. It's not only stupid it's so full of "fuck you we don't care we want to get to the new thing that we think we will make money because despite making great stories we are still a company first and foremost" from Marvel I've ever seen.

I believe this stupid story has so many problems but I will bring them up while I go over the story. First this is Spider-Man mixed in mystical power stones. Spider-Man and mystical stuff unless Dr. Strange comes along for the ride very rarely works. Yeah there's that one silver age story about the magical youth tablets that's alot of fun to read. I'm sure there are a few others but whenever I see mystical stuff and Spider-Man and I don't see Dr. Strange joining in my butthole clenches up and that's never a good thing. So there's a mystical doohickey with 5 pieces that will give people stuff like immortality, death, madness, power and knowledge. Woohoo. 

Norman Osborn wants these because he craves power and while that is true he does crave power, I just don't believe he'd willingly go insane or die for it. I mean he's already a little out of his mind already but the man wants to be around to enjoy this power and he won't be willing to mess that up. I dunno but this part of the story already doesn't feel right to me. Feels forced. It'll get worse. So in the Gathering of Five we find the five people willing to join the whole thing. A bad guy named Override that is so memorable and beloved that Google was trying to tell me that I was thinking of Overdrive another Spider-Man bad guy. Madame Web a character that really should have been hanging out with Dr. Strange and not Spider-Man.  Mattie Franklin a Spider-Woman character that I also forgot about but I'll tell you all about some guy Batman fought for one issue in 1972. Oh and some guy named Maxwell that Norman Osborn knows. That's it. 

The Gathering Of Five is just them getting the pieces for the Final Chapter. Madame Web's chapter literally has her telling Spider-Man how hard this journey will be and then in the next page he's got the piece and is giving it to her. Yes we do not see that hard journey to find the piece. That's so fucking lazy it's unforgivable. Yeah I know you were betting the bank on John Byrne making you super rich on Spider-Man but don't shit out on these last stories for volume one of all of the damn Spider-Man comics. Two of which had been running for decades. I just want some fun comic books not fucking nonsense garbage.

Now all the pieces are put together and we get to see what people got. Or what they think they got. I'll just spoil it now because I don't care. Norman Osborn thinks he gets power but he really got madness. Wonderful huh? I don't really care what the rest of the people got because I don't really care about them as characters. Maybe if a mystical character like Madame Web was placed in the right comic book like Dr. Strange instead of Spider-Man. Oh and another character named Allison Morgran who worked with Norman Osborn has been found by Robbie Robertson and she wants to see Peter Parker. She was seen throughout the last two years because in the final issue of  the Clone Saga, Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson Parker lost their baby. We saw Allison walk out of the hospital with a small package that could hold a baby. She would be seen around cribs and stuff. She had a fucking baby and that was the plot people wanted resolved not what will happen.

What happens is what makes me so mad about this stupid garbage story. It brings back Aunt May. Yeah, the Aunt May who had a great sendoff in Amazing Spider-Man #400. A really beautiful sad little story. It was a classic comic book that shouldn't have been undone so that we can bring back a character that had outgrown the need to be. Like at one point even into the early 90s you were like "oh shit Aunt May had a heart attack what will happen!" but she was seen less and less and they weren't relying on that story as much. So they got rid of her. I guess John Byrne wanted a really back to basics kinda approach which he really loves.  It turns out that a actress died that Norman Osborn used some DNA shit to fiddle with to make her look like Aunt May. I'll let that part pass because well it's a comic book and that kinda stuff works out fine. However when the hell did this happen? Like when did the switch happen. Aunt May passes out around issue 386 or something and is then put in the hospital. More importantly Aunt May is a person Peter Parker knows better than anyone and this actress was THAT good to fool him? Yeah I don't buy that.

Another thing that makes me so mad about this comic is that how the Final two chapters work. So Spider-Man brings Aunt May to Reed Richards who tells him she's the real deal AND tells him she's got a thing in her brain that Norman Osborn put there. He goes to Norman Osborn to try to fight him. Norman Osborn tells him that its a trigger that will start up these DNA bombs he has placed everywhere so he can turn peoples DNA into what he wants it to be. This is just dumb as fuck man. The second to last chapter looks like Spider-Man was gonna be blown the fuck up by Norman Osborn just to have the last issue find out that he'd had gotten madness from the Gathering of Five. Spider-Man then goes to hold up a building and after he gets it up goes IM DONE BEING SPIDER-MAN BECAUSE YOUR ALL MEAN. no seriously this shit comes out of nowhere and is dumb because we all know that he will become Spider-Man again but this is the laziest way that story has ever been done.  It really felt like it was pulled out of their ass and not well set up. You can do a story from different angles but you gotta fucking try.

FINAL VERDICT: My least favorite Spider-Man story that I've read. I have not read One More Day. It didn't lead to better things. John Byrne and Howard Mackie who seems to be the guy John Byrne tells what to write because he's not in the mood to write made Vol. 2 of Spider-Man some awful shit that no Spider-Man fan has every said a positive thing about (that I've seen). They end up killing off Mary Jane Watson Parker and I don't even think I bothered to read these stories until recently. I must have been at Allan's Video deciding what stuff to rent or at home because my parents finally let me stay home. I dunno but I gave up on comics for about 4 or 5 years until 2003. I don't know what's gonna be reviewed next but it won't be as lazy or as stupid as these comic books.