The Beyond Era Continues: A Review of The Amazing Spider-Man #76

 written by Zeb Wells

drawn by Patrick Gleason

colored by Marcio Menyz

After the U-Foes put Peter Parker in the hospital with radiation poisoning during his team-up with Ben Reilly last issue, a conscience-stricken Ben defies his paymasters at the Beyond Corporation and pays Peter a visit to do the one thing he arguably should have done in the first place; he asks for Peter's blessing to be Spider-man, and not a moment too soon.

After providing a fairly substantial story in the oversized last issue, Marvel disappoints with a story that, as I've just shown, can literally be summed up in one paragraph.  To be fair, Patrick Gleason positively owns this issue with some great linework and character rendering, but Zeb Wells' threadbare script is clearly designed to let on as little as possible about this new status quo and what "Beyond" is really all about. As a result, it left me feeling more like I had just read a five-page bonus story at the back of an anniversary issue than an actual twenty-page story,  This is the difference between someone writing a story for the sake of telling a story and someone writing as part of a bigger committee.  

Although Marvel were always transparent that "Beyond," like Nick Spencer's massive, multi-part storyarcs before it, was going to be one big arc, this never meant that they couldn't do mini-arcs within it. Zeb Wells, when writing back in the 2008 "Brand New Day" era, knew how to tell compact, satisfying stories with A-listers like Chris Bachalo, including a memorable, if slightly disturbing story in which the Lizard ate his own son.   With an artist of Gleason's caliber Wells could definitely come up with some decent stuff if only the "brain trust" would let him off the leash a bit.  He still could, theoretically, if he had one more issue, but in this very issue Marvel has stated that they're already handing off the baton to another creative team in the next issue, which was a big enough pet peeve of mine with rotating artists. Now they have rotating WRITERS before the storyline even ends. 

Bottom line: Wells and Gleason know how tell a decent, satisfying story even with very few pages to do so, which means that the fact that this story has feels like padding has the distinct feel of an editorial mandate. 

6/10