The Battle is Joined: A Review of The Amazing Spider-Man #798

written by Dan Slott
illustrated by Stuart Immonen (p) and Wade von Grawbadger (i)
colored by Marte Gracia

Dan Slott's swansong on The Amazing Spider-Man, "Going Down Swinging" continues as Norman Osborn, having freed himself of the nanites that suppressed his ability to ever become the Green Goblin again and armed with the Carnage symbiote, tracks down Peter Parker a.k.a. Spider-Man at the Daily Bugle, bearing a bomb made from tritium. Meanwhile, Flash Thompson a.k.a. Anti-Venom, after losing the tritium the issue before during a raid by the now-deceased Hobgoblin, works to track it down, only to find the murdered Phil Urich and the imprisoned Jonah Jameson. Meanwhile, the nanny of Harry Osborn's kids, who is secretly on Norman's payroll, makes her move. Things are about to come a head really soon, but perhaps not in the way that Norman Osborn thinks.

I confess, I don't quite understand how Slott plans to stretch out this story over one more issue before getting to the oversized finale in the landmark 800th issue of the book. It seemed (to me at least) that with this issue he's already effective lyset up a climactic confrontation for next issue, especially if it's extra-sized. Still, Slott's done pretty well with his multi-issue arcs; they never feel stretched too thin, so if he needs an extra issue to get to his finale, chances are it'll be a good one. In that, he's quite unlike Brian Bendis, whose habit of stretching out stories gave "decompressed" storytelling the bad reputation it "enjoys" today. I suppose he has a bombshell or two lined up for next issue before the final confrontation, like, for example, a revelation by Osborn that the "Sins Past" storyline was basically him delivering an epic mind-f**k by making Peter (whose identity he now knows again, with J. Jonah Jameson having spilled the beans) believe that he'd boned Gwen Stacy. The undoing of that narrative abomination would be worth its very own issue, really.

Going back to this issue, though, while I still have some qualms about how slowly Slott is allowing his narrative to unfold, I did enjoy how the various narrative threads played out here, from Flash investigating Urich's theft to the development with the kids to the main narrative involving Peter's first encounter with the "Red Goblin." Of course, all of this works even better thanks to Stuart Immonen and his crew being at the absolute top of their game.

This story really has me optimistic for a grand finale for this creative team.

8.5/10