Amazing Spider-Man by Nick Spencer vol. 1: Back to Basics

After Dan Slott’s epic decade-long run on “Amazing Spider-Man” who did Marvel get to follow in his stead as the writer on that title?  None other than Nick Spencer! Yes, that’s right. The writer who previously had a run on “Captain America” that can best be characterized as really controversial and followed it up with the event series “Secret Empire” that went over almost as well.  I wasn’t expecting Spencer to have the brightest future at Marvel after these things, but I’m glad Marvel saw past them — and likely remembered the writer’s run on underappreciated classic “The Superior Foes of Spider-Man.”  While this first volume of Spencer’s “Amazing Spider-Man” doesn’t break any new ground, it serves up a clever story with sharp writing and some “Invincible” art.

Peter Parker is in a pretty good place right now.  None of Spider-Man’s rogues gallery are making big plans to menace the city, and he’s got a great job as the editor of the science section for the Daily Bugle.  Naturally, this means that something has to go wrong for him. Which would be the loss of his job after it’s revealed that he plagiarized a paper from Otto Octavius in the course of obtaining his doctorate from Empire State University.  Though his life is in shambles (again) following this revelation, he’s given a second chance to earn his doctorate legitimately after Dr. Curt Connors, a.k.a. The Lizard, makes an impassioned plea in his defense.

While I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Peter’s life in shambles (again), Spencer won me over with the reasons why it happened.  It’s a clever use of continuity because while we know he didn’t plagiarize that paper, there’s no way he could explain why. As expertly summed up by Mary Jane, “I didn’t plagiarize my graduate thesis, it was my evil mad scientist arch-nemesis in a clone body of me.”  It’s pretty funny when summed up like that, and Peter puts it into better context later when he realizes that he didn’t actually earn his doctorate. He just went along with Otto’s work.

That was a good sign things were on the right track, but it’s not the main story of this volume.  “Back to Basics” involves an old-school superhero trope with a somewhat more modern twist. After Peter meets with Connors in person during class and finds out about his latest project, the Black Ant and Taskmaster show up.  They’re here to get their hands on Connors’ Isotope Genome Accelerator, which he was hoping to use to separate the lizard part of himself from the human. After Peter sets up a distraction to give him some cover to change into Spider-Man, he takes out the bad guys with little effort.  While everyone is very surprised to see the Wall Crawler in person, the most surprised is Peter Parker himself.

That’s right, we’re dealing with the story where the superhero and his civilian persona are split into two different people.  We’ve seen this story done before, and I’m pretty sure this isn’t even the first time it’s happened to Spider-Man. Still, if there’s one superhero in the Marvel Universe who would benefit most from this, it’s Spidey.  Now Spider-Man can focus on saving everyone 24/7 while Peter can actually enjoy a decent social life. The catch here is that the personality split between the two isn’t even and they each retain different memories. So while Spider-Man has all of the technical and physical knowledge, Peter is the one who actually remembers the death of his Uncle Ben.

So the crux of the story is seeing how Peter tries to recombine with a Spider-Man who has (wait for it) all of the power but none of the responsibility.  While I like the twist Spencer provides to this familiar superhero story, what makes it even better is the sharpness of his writing. I’ve always enjoyed the writer’s sense of humor and he’s found a superhero who’s a perfect outlet for it.  Spidey’s one-liners and social observations are a lot of fun to read and are the one thing that I think this new series does better than Slott’s run.

Well, there’s arguably one other thing.  While “Amazing” has seen lots of top-flight artists grace its pages over the years — Stuart Immonen, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Marcos Martin, Stefano Caselli — an A-list superhero artist makes his Marvel debut in this volume:  Ryan Ottley. After a decade working on “Invincible,” Ottley’s first work for one of the Big Two is truly spectacular indeed. While the same impressive level of detail that he brought to his signature series is here as well, he brings real energy and style to this volume of “Amazing.”  Whether it’s the superheroes-vs-aliens fight from the first issue or the fleet of Tri-Sentinels attacking in the last, Ottley knows how to bring the action and gives the volume a fresh look to it as well.

He won’t be the artist on every issue, but we’ve got another Spider-great artist who he’ll be alternating with:  Humberto Ramos. Ramos pitches in here for the extra-sized first issue with a Mysterio court scene that quickly turns horrific — consider yourself warned if you’re not a fan of bugs.  It’s pretty sharp, but the scene’s main purpose is to introduce a new villain (at least, I think he’s new) who has connections to the old rogues gallery.

That part, along with the asides that eventually point to another classic villain by the end of the volume, show that Spencer has some long-term plans for his run.  I like that too since it’s never a bad thing when you can see that a writer is building towards something. It also makes me want to invest in this series for the long run, which is a commitment I find easy to make based on Spencer and Ottley’s efforts here.