written by Nick Spencer
penciled by Ryan Ottley
inked by Cliff Rathburn
colored by Nathan Fairbairn
The line-wide Absolute Carnage crossover comes to the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man, in which the mysterious new centipede-infested villain known only as Kindred makes a major move against Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, who, as a direct result, has to fight for his life, as well as those of Normie Osborn and Dylan Brock, against a symbiote-infused, possessed Norman Osborn.
Not being a fan of Carnage, I was grateful that Nick Spencer, apart from a page or two to provide exposition, provides very little connective tissue between this story and the main "saga," choosing instead to focus on Peter, and everything that he's lost to Norman Osborn, something that apparently he and his mysterious supernatural antagonist have in common.
These two issues, more than serving as a crossover for the Carnage event, serve a very specific purpose and that is to raise anticipation for Spencer's mystery villain to a fever pitch, and in this they are a rousing success. Spencer plays around with a non-linear storytelling format which is interesting but which doesn't quite click with me. It's been done better by other writers, in my opinion. Still, now I REALLY want to get my hands on the big story finally revealing who Kindred is. This character is apparently tied quite intimately into who Peter is. It irks me that Spencer will leave off his big reveal for another few months as the next couple of months will showcase a 2099 crossover, but I'm willing to wait. All I can say is that Spencer had better make the payoff worth the nearly two years we've waited to see who this character really is.
Also, and I know I'm going out on a limb here, I hold out hope that Spencer will finally take the opportunity retcon "Sins Past" out of existence once and for all.
Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Ryan Ottley's art, which is the strongest it's been in quite a while. I suppose it helps that Spencer gives Ottley the opportunity to draw the gratuitous bloodletting he was used to depicting over in Invincible, (and what better way to draw lots of red fluid without running afoul of the book's age rating than by depicting Carnage's red symbiote?), but Ottley effectively nails the action beats as well, which kind of makes me wistful for what could have been had Ottley illustrated "The Hunted" instead of Humberto Ramos. I don't know how much longer Ottley will stay on this title before moving on to other Marvel books, but I sure hope we get more issues like this before he finally goes his merry way.
8/10
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