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Amazing Spider-Man #609 Review

Amazing Spider-Man #609

Writer: Marc Guggenheim

Penciler: Marco Checchetto and Luke Ross

Inker: Marco Checchetto and Rick Maygar

Colorist: Fabio D’Auria

Cover: Adi Granov

Reviewed by Gerard Delatour II

As always, this review contains SPOILERS.  Consider yourself WARNED!

Plot Overview

Picking up from last issue, we have parallel storylines taking place in present-day New York City and in a flashback to Portland.  In the present, Spider-Man and Kaine duke it out, first in a warehouse and then in the streets.  Kaine is looking for Damon Ryder, who he believes can cure him of his clone degeneration.  In the past, Ben Reilly confronts Damon about his injection of the dinosaur DNA formula – Damon sees it as having moved beyond research into application, with the requisite imagining of dollar signs to come.  Ben ties Damon up with the rubber hose of a Bunsen burner and takes off, all while a familiar shadowed figure watches in the distance.  Back in the present, the fight continues.  Kaine launches a taxi into the air, and takes the opportunity to escape as Spidey saves the passengers.  A prerecorded, looping message plays on the taxi’s information screen – it’s Screwball, challenging Spider-Man to a fight of some kind for ratings purposes.  Spidey heads home, only to barge in on a barely-dressed Michele, who gives him an item left behind by Damon: a burnt toy.  Back in the past, Ben has brought a paramedic to sedate Damon, but Damon has escaped.  In present day, Michele tells Peter that Damon is heading for the Reillys, so Peter tells Michele to take a hike – no, not in the way we all hoped, but rather telling her to go to a hotel for safety.  He takes her phone and heads to Queens.  In similar parallel scenes, Ben enters Damon’s home, with his wife and family present, while Peter enters the Reilly squatter’s den (with poor Harry at gunpoint) to encounter Raptor, who has bound and gagged the hot cousins.  In the past, Ben confronts Damon, who has begun to transform a little, while Kaine lurks outside, noting Ben’s presence.  The issue ends in the present, with Peter stuck in a tough spot – reveal himself to Harry and the Reillys to save them, or take no action and let them die.  OH NOES!

The Good

Like last issue, Amazing Spider-Man #609 has some gorgeous art.  A few of Ross’ panels look a little off, but Checchetto really brings it, especially in the Kaine fight scenes.

The Kaine fight is a big plus, because of the dynamic presentation.  It begins in a warehouse, then spills out onto the streets, and the entire thing plays out with classic Spidey quips and kinetic art.  Kaine looks and sounds appropriately worn and desperate, perhaps more driven than we’ve seen him before.  This was the definite highlight of the issue.

The issue weighs a bit more heavily on the present-day storyline than the previous issue, which felt relatively even in terms of story depth for each branch of the plot.  This is a good thing, because the storyline in the past serves mainly as setup for the character of Damon Ryder, not requiring any more pages than it received.  Pushing it could have ruined the pace, which moves nicely here, minus one bit that I’ll mention shortly.

A very minor (but pleasant) plus goes to Guggenheim for copping to the Stegron parallel I mentioned in the previous review.  Ben mentions that Stegron did the exact same thing as Damon, and notes the disastrous results as his primary cause for worry.

The Bad

One nagging problem with the issue was the apparent mischaracterization of Kaine.  For starters, he’s never had a problem with Peter Parker – but he does here.  At one point he says, “You were identical in every way that matters.  You’ve no business living any more than he does.”  Granted, Kaine is in a different state of mind than he was during the Clone Saga (as shown in Web of Spider-Man #1), but with Guggenheim’s history of fudged characterization and continuity, this is a cause to worry, at least until next issue, which I hopes explains the sudden turnaround.  Secondarily, Peter should be aware of Kaine’s degeneration, which caused me to cock an eyebrow (stop snickering over there, it’s proper usage!) when Kaine had to explain it to Spider-Man during the fight.

The Screwball beat drove me batty for a couple of reasons.  One, we just came off of a big fight, and instead of trying to locate Kaine quickly before he’s gone for good, Spider-Man stops to watch Screwball flap her gums on a TV screen.  This is a sharp halt to the exciting, fast-paced momentum of the opening.  Second, I just don’t like the character and feel that she’s especially out of place in this story.  This is the second time she’s shown up in this arc, having made an even larger set-piece appearance in the first issue, and both appearances made me want to gouge my eyes out.  It’s one thing to try to set up an upcoming story within the ongoing one, but it’s entirely another to bring the momentum to a screeching halt to do so.

Then again, lapses in logic abound in this issue, and it’s not just limited to the ol’ Webhead.  Ben Reilly leaves Damon alone in the lab, his hands tied with the rubber hose from a Bunsen burner.  Apparently, Ben must not have been paying attention when Damon stated that the formula enhanced his strength, because he should have known better than that.  It needlessly extends the plotline of the story in the past, and that was a problem given how few pages that story got.

The Damon Ryder character himself provides no real interest for me.  One problem that has plagued the title since the Brand New Day reboot has been the lack of compelling new villains on the level of Doctor Octopus or the Green Goblin, and Raptor is no exception.  I’m much more interested in Kaine, to be honest, and the Raptor plotline is a straight dud to me.

Both the throwaway nature of the flashback storyline and the nagging problems with the present-day one dragged the issue down into the dumps for me.  However, I haven’t addressed the biggest problem of the issue yet …

The Ugly

… the scene with Michele.

Okay, now I can admit that I’m a hot-blooded male.  I like my babes sultry and my stares smoldering, so a little T&A here and there doesn’t offend me as much as others.  Not every female in comics needs to be wrapped up like Mother Theresa of Calcutta … in Antarctica … at night … during a snowstorm.  In short, I’m not insulted by seeing “teh wimmins” if the gratuitousness is short and not overplayed.  I’m not a member of the Catholic League – I’m far from it.

However, this issue drew a line on the ground and then proceeded to pole-vault well beyond it.  This thing was gratuitous in every sense of the word, designed solely to try and titillate the extraordinarily horny teenage boys that apparently make up the target audience into adding this to their spank bank.  I can’t give the description justice, and if you’ve seen the comic, you know exactly what I mean.  Every gesture, facial expression, and camera placement is contrived and planned for the exact purpose of providing an exhibition – no doubt about it, 100%, lock-down, stone-cold truth.  I could almost hear editor Stephen Wacker yelling into my ear, “Look!  She’s not wearing a bra!  And check out those thong straps!  Good looking out, AM I RIGHT?!”

UGH.  I’m done.

Final Thoughts

This was an issue that started with an exciting, visually astounding fight scene, and then proceeded to slalom straight down the mountain.  Give me more Kaine and less of Raptor and Screwball, and I’ll be a happy reader.  Marco Checchetto is a real find, and I hope he sticks around the title for a while.

Grade

C+.  It’s a C- or D+ without Checchetto.