Amazing Spider-Man #678
Writer: Dan Slott
Art: Humberto Ramos [Pencils], Victor Olazaba [Inks] and Edgar Delgado [Color]
New York City will be destroyed in 24 hours, and Spider-Man only has until 3:10 P.M. to stop it!
Following a dark vision of the future seen with an invention of one of Horizon Labs’ brain trust members, Grady Scraps, Peter Parker sets out to prevent catastrophe and change the invention’s “Bad Tuesday” back into a “Good Tuesday.”
Oh, and, per Madame Web, he can’t seek help from the Avengers or Fantastic Four, or try to evacuate the city.
That shouldn’t be too hard, right?
Dan Slott begins his latest story arc with a classic premise: Presenting the hero with a seemingly insurmountable challenge that, ideally, shows them they are capable of overcoming greater obstacles than they imagined. This is a common premise in Spider-Man stories, especially, because it fits the basic tenets of the character, and it makes a great filler story when you’ve got a big event coming up like the much-anticipated “Ends of the Earth” Sinister Six storyline that begins in a few months.
Even with all of the familiarity in the basic premise, Slott adds in details that set the story apart — namely opening pages where Peter decides to walk to work because web-swinging tends to have him missing the “big picture” of the melting pot that is New York City. Pete’s interactions on the two-page spread at the beginning of the story not only add little details while including New York City as a “character” in the book, they underscore just what’s at stake if he fails later on in the story.
Humberto Ramos continues to impress, and his style of art has really grown on me. It’s cartoonish, but not too exaggerated — and looking back, I kind of wish the Spider-Man animated series from the ’90s had looked like this. Of course, he’s also one of the nicest guys in the industry, so he’d get bonus points on that even if his art was terrible.
Nice start to this two-parter. The only thing I’m left wondering, which I thought of when I started reading this, is that with the Marvel version of New York City seemingly destroyed about 4 or 5 times a year, how are most of the citizens still alive for Spider-Man to save, anyways?
STORY: 8.5/10
ART: 9/10
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