Amazing Spider-Man: Full Circle

I wasn’t sure why we needed another random “Amazing Spider-Man” one-shot when this was solicited, but the creative team attached to it sold me on the idea of picking it up (eventually).  Contributing to this story are (deep breath):  Jonathan Hickman, Chris Bachao, Gerry Duggan, Greg Smallwood, (current Spider-Writer) Nick Spencer, Mike Allred, Kelly Thompson, Valerio Schiti, Al Ewing, Chris Sprouse, Chip Zdarsky, Rachel Stott, Jason Aaron, Cameron Stewart, and Mark Bagley.  How did they fit all these creators together for this one-shot?  By doing a vastly scaled-down version of the “Kamandi Challenge” with each creative team putting their spin on  their part of the story and setting up a cliffhanger that the next one had to resolve.

The end result for “Full Circle” is the kind of crazed fever dream that you’d expect from setting this many creators loose on a Spider-Man story.  It starts off in space with Nick Fury and an A.I.M. plot and then quickly crashes to Earth to rope in a ferret theme park, a highly contagious werewolf disease, the High Evolutionary, more Spider-Hams than you can shake a stick at, and a disembodied voice talking to Peter behind several locked doors and a manhole.  Yes, this barely functions as a proper story, but it wasn’t really intended to.  All of the writers feel liberated to get as crazy as they can — with Ewing and Aaron’s sections getting special points in that area — while all of the artists look to thrive on it.  Things even manage to stick the landing in a finale that smacks the reset button in a fun and interesting way.

Is this all worth $10, I’d say so.  Just be advised that even though this is advertised as an 126-page collection, you’re only getting 82-pages of actual comics.  What takes up the rest of the collection?  The expected selection of variant covers, the full script of the one-shot, and (best of all) a text chat between the creators as they discuss how to end the damn thing.  Not a bad selection of extras to pad things out.  Just be sure to pick this up in its original paperback form or digitally.  I liked this, but not enough to recommend paying $30 for it in hardcover form.