written by Nick Spencer
drawn by Patrick Gleason, Federico Vicentini, Roge Antonio
With Giant Size Amazing Spider-Man: King's Ransom , Nick Spencer has paid off yet another of his long-running storylines in his three-year run on The Amazing Spider-Man , and has done so in surprisingly fine style. After Spencer started out strong with his first year on this title, things kind of went off the rails with "Hunted," the difficult-to-read sequel to the seminal "Kraven's Last Hunt" story, and the meandering storyline of new-old character "Kindred."
With "King's Ransom" Spencer pays off two story threads he's had running since his first year on the series, namely Spider-Man's curious relationship with his roommate Boomerang, and Randy Robertson's relationship with the new Beetle, who also happens to be longtime Spidey foe Tombstone's daughter. Boomerang's quest for the tablet of life, a magical artifact capable of raising the dead, finally comes to a head, as does his strained relationship with the Kingpin, and Spider-Man learns some startling truths.
I suppose one could say the ending of Boomerang's story had an air of predictability to it, but I'll admit I didn't see it coming. What I do like was how logical and natural it felt in the course of things, and I'll avoid elaborating lest I spoil the plot for anyone interested. The Parker luck basically rears its head again, but in a way that makes sense and doesn't feel altogether gratuitous. Suffice it to say that this story is the most coherent writing I've seen from Spencer in a while. It's definitely an improvement over the bloated "Sins Past" and "Last Remains" storylines, and certainly stands head-and-shoulders above his Kraven saga. This story is relatively compact and pays off in a fashion that pretty much ties this story up,
Helping Spencer along are his usual army of collaborators, with artists Patrick Gleason, Federico Vicentini and relative Spidey newcomer Roge Antonio sharing the art duties this time around. All three artists are quite notably talented, but I really miss the days when J. Michael Straczynski could count on John Romita, Jr. to draw all six issues of a storyline, or, more recently, when Jim Cheung drew all five issues of the "Clone Conspiracy" for Dan Slott. This business of rotating artists is particularly absurd when one considers that the culmination of the Boomerang/Kingpin saga was only six issues long, with none of those "filler" issues. I would love to see a full four to six issue storyline from ANY of the three artists who worked on "King's Ransom." In particular, Patrick Gleason's work stood out, and his rendition of Spider-man has vastly improved since he came on board this title about two years ago. Still, this story arc features some of the best art that the title has seen since Ryan Ottley left the book a short while back.
This is worth checking out; it's a decent read.
8/10
