Sunday, January 16, 2022

A Break from "Beyond": A review of The Amazing Spider-Man #82

 written by Saladin Ahmed

illustrated  by Jorge Fornes

colored by Dan Brown


Well, Marvel has finally shown its hand: the "Beyond" storyline will end and yet another relaunch of The Amazing Spider-Man will take place in April, with legendary artist John Romita, Jr. returning to the title after several years working for the Distinguished Competition. Personally, I always took it as a given that "Beyond" was a temporary storyline, and I'm still interested in seeing how Marvel resolves it.


This story, in which Peter Parker continues to recuperate from the radiation poisoning he suffered in the very first issue of the "Beyond" saga, is a bit of an intermission from the adventures of Ben Reilly. As Peter recovers, he can't help but notice the strange manner in which several of his roommates at the hospital ward are removed by a suspicious-looking orderly who is apparently breaching hospital protocol, citing only "special circumstances." When the orderly comes for the still-incapacitated Peter, he'll need all the help he can get.


Writer Saladin Ahmen and artist Jorge Fornes bring an entertaining but fairly ordinary story involving Peter (and not Spider-Man) that could have happened in a number of other titles.  It's worth reviewing because it's quite conspicuously different from everything that's been going on in the title for the last four months or so. I missed the boat for the Miles Morales/Beyond crossover for some reason, with Omicron keeping me indoors, but at least I got to catch this amusing issue, even though, if I'm honest, I've seen better from Ahmed. I'm still hoping to see his work with an A-list artist down the line, and Jorge Fornes simply is not that artist. 


6.5/10



No comments:

Post a Comment