written by Kelly Thompson
drawn by Sara Pichelli with James Towe
colored by Nolan Woodard, Rachelle Rosenberg
Once upon a time, Marvel Comics published a comic book that was just so bold, so out there, so uncompromising and so unlike anything else that it was publishing at the time that it left an indelible mark on its fans and has since become a genuinely revered part of its vast catalog of works.
That work was Nextwave, by Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen, and it is on the goodwill of that truly unique twelve-issue story that the current team behind The Amazing Spider-man are banking to propel their "Beyond" story arc.
After having been bitten in the neck by longtime Spidey foe Michael Morbius, Ben Reilly, aka Spider-Man breaks free of the vampire's grasp and comes up with a way to deal with Morbius a way that is both creative and downright gruesome. Afterwards, as Ben's paymasters at the Beyond Corporation attend to his injuries from his latest encounter, the big boss at Beyond, Maxine Danger contemplates the unthinkable. Meanwhile, a comatose Peter Parker shows signs of movement upon receiving a visit from former flame Felicia Hardy.
With this issue, Marvel wraps up another two-issue mini arc, this one by writer Kelly Thompson and artist Sara Pichelli (with a little helping hand from James Towe) and now have nearly enough issues for the series' first collected edition of stories. It's still too early to say if this "Beyond" era is a success, and the test of the pudding, for me, will be how far they can take Beyond's pretty obvious villainy. We got the briefest glimpse of it in this issue, with the Beyond boss briefly considering letting Ben Reilly suffer the effects of Morbius' bit to see how his spider-altered blood would react to the bite, but there's definitely a lot more to come from this storyline than just teases and hints. I'm patient enough to wait, and to be fair, Thompson took over storytelling duties pretty seamlessly from Zeb Wells.
Another things that makes it easier to wait to see Marvel unveil Beyond's grand plan is Sara Pichelli's art, which, as always, is easy on the eyes. It's a departure from Patrick Gleason's art, to be sure, but there's still an aesthetic consistency.
In a way, the "Beyond" era of The Amazing Spider-Man seems to be taking a page directly out of Ellis and Immonen's storytelling approach to "Nextwave" which was basically to tell stories in two-page miniarcs while tying everything together in a bigger narrative. This, for me, works a lot better than the sprawling, often chaotic approach to storytelling that ultimately ruined Nick Spencer's three-year, eighty-odd issue run on the book. The stories may not (as yet, anyway) be as strong as some of Spencer's best, or even those of Dan Slott before him, but I'm enjoying the format they've been presented in so far, as strange as this may sound.
Also, considering that Morbius is about to appear in his very own feature film, it's quite interesting to see what the Spider-Man brain trust allowed to happen to him this issue, even though it's almost a given that it won't be a permanent condition.
8/10
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