Have you been keeping up with the Amazing Spider-Man series over the past year? If not, aside from the Dark Web storyline, you’re missing out on some of the finest Spider-Man comics in over a decade.
Twitter discussions about the series often focus on whether Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson are married. For the record, I’m pro-Spider-Marriage and still upset about the One More Day storyline, where their marriage was erased through a deal with the devil. The way it was done was among the worst and least fitting Spider-Man stories ever.
One More Day is nearly old enough to drink now, and it’s time to move on. I dipped in and out of Dan Slott’s run, which ranged from baffling to excellent but never consistently good enough to hook me. I also felt there was never a good jumping-on point. I got excited with Nick Spencer and Ryan Ottley’s relaunch, especially after a great debut issue that ended with a triumphant kiss between Peter and MJ, signaling their reunion.
However, Spencer’s run quickly became a convoluted mess. I was ready to give up on Spider-Man altogether. But after reading the first arc of Zeb Wells and John Romita Jr.’s run, an emotionally charged crime thriller with Tombstone, I was back on board, despite being sad to see MJ shuffled out of Peter’s life.
The “Mystery Box” approach in the early issues was frustrating. The book opened with Spider-Man screaming in a crater, holding a strange device, and his costume torn. The marketing asked, “What did Peter do?” After a six-month time skip, Peter returned to NYC, isolated and having pushed everyone out of his life, including Aunt May, his roommate, and The Fantastic Four. Worst of all, MJ was with a new man named Paul and seemed to have children with him. Why separate Spidey and MJ after the last run spent so much time retconning old stories to clean the slate for them?
Despite these misgivings, the run has been tremendous. After Tombstone, there was a great two-issue fight with The Vulture, followed by a Hobgoblin story that evoked the best of Roger Stern and JRjr’s original stories. Even the hints of MJ throughout this story showed a clear understanding of her character.
Wells and Romita have shown they can tell great stories. But my concern remains with the editorial team, which made many awful decisions during Spencer’s run. The same team continues working with Wells, making similar hyperbolic claims and sloppy errors. The Dark Web crossover is a perfect example of this mismanagement.
My sentiments have shifted from cautious optimism to full-throated excitement as the latest issues unfold. We are finally getting answers to the Mystery Box. In the current story arc, an old enemy of Spider-Man returns. Dr. Rabin, a mad scientist and mathematician, is hell-bent on summoning a Mayan god named Wayep. To summon Wayep, Spider-Man must die. Rabin attacks Peter and Mary Jane, transporting them into an alternate reality where Wayep has destroyed the planet, and they are tragically separated.
As superhero readers, we expect the hero to rise above challenges and reestablish the status quo. But this story, with its interdimensional dangers, makes it clear that things are about to go horribly wrong. The stakes are clear because we know what they are.
What could have been so bad that forced Peter Parker to ostracize himself from everyone? What could break this couple, who were on the verge of moving in together, to the point that MJ now had a family of her own?
There will never be another Gwen Stacy moment, where superhero comic readers can believe in the stakes of a story or the consequences of a tragic moment. By foregrounding shocking status quo changes at the beginning, readers have already absorbed the consequences of the story we are reading now. We get the full revelation of what led to those changes with a full understanding of the weight of what is to come.
Peter is not fighting to maintain the status quo. There are real costs to this battle against Rabin and Wayep. In the latest issue, after narrowly escaping an alternate version of New York where Wayep has decimated the planet, Peter is frantically searching for a way back to retrieve Mary Jane, who stayed behind so that Peter could escape. He is injured, desperate, and not thinking clearly. No explanation satisfies The Fantastic Four or Captain America, who want to take their time and work through a plan. But Peter knows that mere hours in their world are weeks there. MJ could already be dead. Each second is precious. After pushing away everyone that could help, Peter turns to the reformed Norman Osborn.
What’s interesting about these pages of Peter fighting his friends and allies is not the physical feats or the cool action Romita draws but the way they elevate Peter’s worst habits. Ultimately, Peter views himself as fundamentally on his own. When people are not quick to trust him or follow his lead, he lashes out and strikes off on his own. It’s one of his most toxic traits. It never leads to the correct choice, but he cannot help himself.
Many people criticize Zeb Wells’s writing on this title, seeing him as opposed to the Peter/Mary Jane relationship or actively trolling fans of it. But a good faith reading reveals the opposite.
These two characters are deeply in love, and the “What did Peter do?” story unfolding now seeks to tell a love story of epic tragedy. That love drives each character to heroically sacrifice themselves for one another. Before Peter is tossed back into the Marvel Universe, Paul informs the couple that Rabin had sent them to this apocalyptic world as a sacrifice to draw Wayep to their reality. The key to unlocking that door is Spider-Man’s death.
Paul, MJ’s future significant other, is revealed to have been a former associate of Rabin and has lots of convenient knowledge and tools, none of which make him particularly trustworthy.
Upon hearing the truth of Rabin’s plan, both MJ and Peter decide they must save the other. With only one dimension-hopping device available, they fight over who must go back. Peter wants to send MJ to safety and fight Wayep. But MJ knows that should Spider-Man fail, it will mean chaos for Earth. She is determined to have Peter go back even if it means she dies far from home. As Wayep attacks, Mary Jane activates the device, sending Peter across time and space and stranding herself.
It’s an epic and tragic tale of sacrifice for love. Neither is willing to see the other suffer, and both believe their heroic action is the right choice. It’s not a happily ever after story (yet, anyway, future issues could reunite them). This is almost Shakespearean in its irony and torment. The ultimate act of love is not selfishly hanging onto the other but saving the one you love from themselves. Even if it means never seeing them again. That’s romance. That’s the kind of big drama that superhero stories can grapple with. It takes the kernel of a deeply personal and human struggle, like losing a loved one, and expands the personal into something primal and universal. The emotions are first and foremost.
Peter alienates Cap and Human Torch out of grief. He is being senseless. So great is his loss and fear that nothing else could possibly matter.
Romita’s kinetic artwork makes the emotional beating physically brutalizing. The couple’s desperate attempts to be and remain together against all odds manifest in showstopping action that grounds pages and panels to a halt. In the first fight with Rabin, Peter crashes into the doctor with his full strength. His elbow smashes into the villain, contorting him in inhuman directions. The image takes up a third of the page horizontally, with no vertical panels breaking up the action. Peter digs into Rabin, his body tearing straight across the page, emphasizing his speed as the vertical Rabin bisects the panel. The unstoppable force meets the immovable object. The velocity is clear in their positioning.
Rabin’s back smashes through the wall, a large KRAK sound effect tracing along his spine. In the next panel, Rabin falls from the apartment to the ground below.
During Spider-Man’s battle with Wayep, the god’s sheer size and imposing figure is emphasized as his stark white figure crowds the panels. We never see a full image of the god. Panel borders cannot contain him. The gutters here are black, not white, making Wayep stand out all the more. Marcio Menyz’s colors add to the contrast with more subdued and subtler use of highlight and shadow. Wayep’s assault transcends the constraints of time and space as understood on the comics page, his attacks crossing panel borders and gutters to strike from the past and future simultaneously.
Time and space itself are conspiring to keep these lovers apart. How much sweeter, then, should they find their way to one another again? And even if they do not end up wrapped up in one another’s arms at story’s end, what a testament to their love that they would reach across reality to find each other, that they would sacrifice their own life for the other’s well-being.
Perhaps MJ’s sacrifice of trapping herself in Wayep’s world, a desolate world without hope, is matched by Peter’s sacrifice of letting her go to explore whatever has yet to be revealed about her life with Paul and the children, trapping himself in a desolate world without hope.
Sometimes, love means impossible choices. Peter and Mary Jane make those impossible choices for one another here. There is no clearer sign of their love, and however the final parts of this story shake out, it is shaping up to be one of the most stirring examinations of their love for one another. To diminish the work Wells and Romita are doing here to mere “trolling” or a petulant flight of fancy is to miss out on excellent superhero comic storytelling.
