Amazing Spider-Man by Nick Spencer vol. 8: Threats & Menaces

Vol. 7 was a bit of a misfire for this series as the storytelling and the art didn’t click as well as they usually do.  “Threats & Menaces,” however, represents a return to form as writer Nick Spencer gets back to what he does best on this title:  Showing us familiar and weird bits of Spider-Man’s history in a new and fun light.  Familiar, in the form of Spidey’s… complicated history with J. Jonah Jameson, who has just been recruited by Norah Winters to start working at her new media news outlet.  While you’d think that an old-school journalist like Jameson would hate everything about that offer, it actually has more in common with his old tactics than he’d like to admit.  Especially when he gets his first major podcast guest — Spider-Man!  Then it’s time to check in with Boomerang to find out about the secret he’s been keeping from Wilson Fisk all this time.  It’s something that leads him and Spidey on a hunt through the underbelly of New York City where they come face to face with none other than the title character’s pet monster!

Seeing Boomerang show up again for an arc is always a good time as his arrogant self-absorption is always good for a laugh.  Better still is that Ryan Ottley returned to illustrate this arc and seeing him draw the adventures and carnage the monster has and leaves behind are as good as you’d expect. Still, I was kind of hoping for Boomerang’s secret to be more than just a MacGuffin from Spidey’s past.  That’s why the opening arc with Jameson is the better of the two stories here.  Spencer has a really good handle on the Jameson/Spidey relationship and shows us how even though they’re friends now, things are just as fractured as they’ve always been.  He even does it in a way that makes good use of continuity as well.  Also, Iban Coello and Ze Carlos may not be on Ottley’s level, but they still deliver some solid art for this arc.

“Threats & Menaces” is a good example of the strengths of Spencer’s run so far.  I’d be happy if subsequent volumes followed its lead.  At least, until you consider those really dark “The Sins of…” shorts that are at the ends of some of these issues…