Amazing Spider-Man #552

Marvel Comics

Writer: Bob Gale

Pencils: Phil Jimenez

Inks: Andy Lanning

Another month, another new creative team on Amazing Spider-Man. This would be an exciting strategy, if the art and writing were better.

In Amazing Spider-Man #552, the DB (formerly the Daily Bugle) publishes a headline declaring Spider-Man a serial killer. Harry Osborn’s girlfriend’s dad is pressured to run for mayor, and a drug addict happens upon Dr. Curt Connors’ lab and injects himself with a serum that transforms him into Amazing Inside-Out Boy (if anyone remembers that reference, they get a free e-card).  

In case you’d forgotten, it’s still a BRAND NEW DAY for the Amazing Spider-Man. Has been for two months now, and Marvel Comics’ inability to judge when twenty-four hours begins and ends is not their only problem. The first two story arcs of Amazing Spider-Man have been lifeless and mediocre, and this new arc may follow in those footsteps.

Writer Bob Gale has a better grasp of Spider-Man’s character than Marc Guggenheim did, but, so far, he isn’t much better at grabbing a reader’s attention. The quips and jokes are wittier, but the events still stumble along at a humdrum pace. That, and the ostensibly “new” villain appears to be another version of Carnage. Only, made out of vomit and scabs.

Penciler Phil Jimenez does a better job than Salvador Larocca did, but his style doesn’t seem to mesh fully with Gale’s writing. Part of the problem may be that Jimenez’s attention to detail feels misplaced next to Gale’s dizzyingly frequent change of scene—after awhile, it feels like visual overload.

Worth the money? Still no.