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Nov 13, 2024
Plot
Spider-man has a normal day where he must stop a new villain called Burnout and leaves his family and friends waiting for him, however something different happens, the appearance of Doctor Doom as the Sorcerer Supreme who offers him a job that Spidey rejects.
Suddenly New York is attacked by Cyntros, one of the Covenant of Cyttorak, who had long ago made a deal with Doctor Strange, that every cycle of Cyttorak the Planet Earth must present its Champion who has to fight against the Eight Scions of Cyttorak. Doctor Strange fulfilled this task for a long time, but now it is Doctor Doom's turn, but he prefers to give it to Spider-man because he does not have time for this.
Doctor Doom appears and offers Spider-man the solution for t
his fight but he must accept being the champion of the Planet, Spidey accepts without knowing what he does.
Spider-man receives a new uniform that mixes his abilities with magic and makes him learn thousands of spells in seconds, he uses one that affects Cyntros' gravitational control power, like a black hole, this spell kills Cyntros and Spider-man at the same time.
Suddenly Spider-man resurrects with an unbearable pain, because he recreates himself from scratch, atom by atom, tissue by tissue, when this unbearable pain ends, Doctor Strange in his astral form tells him that he agreed to be the champion in this contest and that he will have to die seven more times in equally painful ways.
Excellent start to a new saga that mixes the world of Spider-man with magic and in a kind of macabre contest.
Art
Ed Mcguinness shows his characteristic art full of many details and a dynamism that jumps off the page, each panel is a work of art where he highlights all those super flexible poses of Spider-man and turns them into instant classics.
Summary
Spider-Man unwittingly agrees to be the champion of Earth in a cosmic contest filled with magic and spells that are not Peter Parker's specialty and promise him to die painfully in an inevitable and consecutive manner. more
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Aug 28, 2025
After reading Zeb Wells run and taking a break from that disappointment, I started here with a clean slate knowing full well that Peter Parker is stunted growth wise and is forever going to be stuck in a loop. I also read USM so that gives me all the juice of what a proper ASM book should be. After that BIG caveat lol, I have to say I enjoyed this for what it is separated from what came before and accepting Joe Kelly lives in 1996 so it's fine. The premise is a throw back to comics of old. Ed McGuinness's art is amazing and makes the experience enjoyable. Top notch art team!
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Nov 16, 2024
It’s nice to have unique looking faces again.
This feels like it’s going to be a filler arc, so I’m rating it as such. Fun little jaunt.
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Feb 17, 2025
Art: 4/5
Story: 3.5/5
Total: 7.5/10
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Nov 14, 2024
I am soooo not kidding that years ago, I said to myself that Marvel needs to put Spidey in an isekai...and wow, I guess this is pretty darn close
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Nov 22, 2024
Yeah I didn't hate this as much as other people seem to have. While there are irksome things, like Peter being a bit stupid - handing over a broken record instead of just saying he didn't get it (although maybe you could argue he wanted to show Shay that he put in the effort but circumstance failed him) - but I don't think the first half of this book is really that bad. I don't think it's even abnormal for a Spider-Man comic. This is just how his social life is 95% of the time, especially post-Brand New Day. What saves it is the lack of reaction from May, Shay and Randy. If they hated him for it then I'd be annoyed, but they mostly just accept it. It's a little bit of arrested development but that's just inevitable as long as they want to k
eep Peter in his status quo.
The opening with Burnout was actually really dynamic. It's a big sequence showing off Spider-Man. His abilities, his personality, etc. It may matter later, it may not. But it served as an introduction. Spidey telling off Doom, while not a new idea, is certainly necessary when the whole premise of the book is that Spider-Man works for Doom. You have to show that Spider-Man wouldn't willingly do so unless the circumstances were that extreme. You could've had the circumstances be that extreme from the get-go, but then you'd lose perspective. You would assume that the reader definitely knows all the characters. Sure, 95% of them might but there are always people reading these characters for the first time, especially at the start of new creative runs.
As for Spider-Man's dialogue, I didn't mind it. The jokes were really rapid fire, and plenty didn't hit, but there were some that worked. I'm fine with that as well. I can't say if Joe Kelly intended for them all to hit. If he thought he was writing a great five minutes. I can say that Spider-Man is kind of not funny. He can be funny, but he's often not incredibly funny. It's built into the character since Stan Lee. Readers, and even writers, kind of forget that Spider-Man is not supposed to have a 100% hit average for his jokes. He throws them out there while fighting, and sometimes they land. That's part of writing and understanding the character, in my opinion. Finding that ratio. Does Joe Kelly nail it? No. He's maybe doing *too much* of a Stan Lee impression with how fast he throws them out there. But I don't think this characterization is out of line with Spider-Man proper.
The biggest failings here for me were the art and the premise. The art felt really flat compared to previous McGuinness issues. And the premise itself has not yet sold me. I'm kind of just waiting for this to be over already. more
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Dec 09, 2024
Really, are we really salivating out the mouth for this?
I understand why people are excited for this new run. No more Zeb Wells, now we can start fresh. Well not exactly. Starting this issue the first panel was striking and really popped out but the dialogue in the action panel was so disjointed and lame I had to look it over a couple times to really find the flow. Which there wasn't any flow at all no matter how hard one tries.
Going on, it seems like a step up that we are now reading from Peter's perspective but it feels to fast paced and rushed and when the moment Doctor Doom comes in the impact is not what it should be. It all just comes off kind of schizophrenic.
SPOILER
When Peter becomes like Doctor Strange or whatever
Doctor Doom turned him into so Spider-Man can fight the forgettable generic demon thing, Peter has to die each time and when he dies for the first time being sucked into the black hole of the demons mouth it was just. Dumb. Even explaining this moment for this poor humble reviewer here has deduced some IQ points.
Like it was something you would come up with when talking to your goofy friends when you use to be in middle school. When your a middle schooler at that time maybe that idea sounded really epic bruh, but on paper its just stupid. Maybe the lack of build up toward Peter's horrifying black hole death is what ruins the moment maybe?
After finishing this the same feeling came over me like when I finished #6 of the Zeb Wells run. But at least I enjoyed the first 5 issues, until it quickly got scrapped and it went downhill from there as we all know. Yet here we are a new start and already I am so underwhelmed and feel like there is no thought to this. It just feels like pulling out so many tricks at once you see through the illusion right away.
I don't care if people don't like what this review says who will actually read it? But if you even go far back too those old comics even to the very beginning of Spidey's existence, even with some of the silliness it all made sense to a degree. This is just bad.
Only giving it a 5.5 because I don't want to be to harsh for the new start but not liking its direction.... Screw you I could give it a 2 but at least the art is nice... more
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Nov 15, 2024
It's average...nothing more to add.
Why though do 'critics' give it marks of 9.5 or laughably 10? The 'Death of Gwen Stacy' is a 9.5, how can a critic give this the same? Please, explain and let me understand the logic.
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Nov 16, 2024
There's a reason why Hickman's Ultimate Spider-Man is doing well. I have hopes that Marvel's Flag Ship title will improve, but this first issue is middling at best. Kudos to Ed’s artwork. He draws a strong Spidey.
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Nov 19, 2024
I haven't been looking forward to this story... It feels gimmicky, like the title came first and the story was built around it. It's always weird when the tone of a super-hero comic changes into realistic and lethal consequences when it's always been about beating the odds and cheating death (I'm thinking about the pre-Krakoa Rosenberg run on X-Men here). It's different if it's the ground rules, like Suicide Squad or Strikeforce Morituri. Not looking forward to the rest of this.
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Nov 19, 2024
I had some fun with it, but it's not nearly enough to justify this corny issue. ASM is just annoying to read.
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Feb 17, 2025
The art is amazing but the writing is so bad. I struggled to barely keep reading through Zeb Wells run but this was just so clunky with awful banter and character writing that I’m done. Once marvel cares enough to give their biggest book a worthy writer, I’ll come back to finally be able to enjoy reading my favorite marvel character again.
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Nov 13, 2024
Wow, this really didn't work for me. Ed's art is great as always, but first half felt like a chore. This whole "Peter Parker is down on his luck, with little money and poor management of his relationships" is definitely not what I expected to read after Wells' run started the exact same way and ended with Peter moving on and having something stable in his life. It doesn't feel at all like a continuation to what Zeb did in his run. And Spider-Man dumping his problems on a 10-year old just feels so irresponsible and childish.
Peter's dialogue just feels off here. I don't know, maybe I was used to Zeb's dialogue, but here he is so wordy while also saying a lot of nothing with a lot of misses in humor
The second part was better. Peter ha
ndling the trauma of dying was interesting, but otherwise this whole gimmick feels random. And just screams of Spidey office having no idea what to do next.
And why is May scolding Peter for not getting his life together? Wasn't the whole point of last run just that? Like am I crazy, or did Kelly just ignore the entire point of last run?
I'm not even kidding when I say that this might be one of the worst first issues of any ASM run I've read in a while. more
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Nov 13, 2024
Most of the dialogue here is just bad. Unfunny jokes, Peter feels like a teenager still, people talking at Peter and everything sailing over his head. Marveling at the fact that he stood up to Doctor Doom despite the fact that he's done it countless times. Whether or not he was the Sorcerer Supreme. Everyone here just felt a bit lifeless. Aside from Kevin. And what was even the point of introducing Burnout? Could he come up later? Sure but as of right now he's nothing and it had zero impact on the story. Just a device to remind readers of Doom's power which isn't necessary because he's DOOM! Kelly seems to be trying a bit too hard to be meta-relevant. We know all of the annoying problems in the world. AI on our phones, corporate ads invadin
g our daily lives aren't really commentary I need from Spider-Man unless it actually matters to the plot. Which in this case feels incredibly contrived. Doom not wanting to do the work of fighting the Scions of Cyttorak is very in line with how Doom operates. But To have Spider-Man do it? I'm sorry but even Doom's monologuing didn't agree with that one. Now all of a sudden, because of a suit change, he just knows the "cool secret names of things"... Show. Don't tell. First rule. Already breaking it. I really want the ramifications of Peter dying and being reborn to have meaning in the future but I'm hard pressed to believe that the significance of that will carry over. Something this important to a character's perception of the world should carry weight and while it does here, it's only in service to a McGuffin plot.
This may be the least I have ever cared for McGuinness' work. That might have something to do with the colorist changing from his previous arcs on ASM but this felt way flatter in terms of vibrancy and pop that was apparent in his older issues. Things here felt a lot more cartoony at the wrong times and traditional when it could have used more expressive features from Spider-Man. It also had this issue when there were multiple characters on a page that everyone looked way less detailed and on model.
I'm just going to assume this entire arc was rushed to get the Wells transition kicked off as quickly as possible. This whole storyline didn't feel like the natural progression it would have taken in preparation for a new writer. Even May is sick and tired of Peter spinning in circles. I really wanted to read every issue of ASM but if this is all I have to expect from this arc, I might jump off next issue. more
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Nov 13, 2024
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/60.webp)
/62.webp)
/61.webp "Amazing Spider-Man #61")
