Man, issue 50 was such a momentous occasion, I needed to ruminate on it for over two years! Now that that's over with, I can finally get back to it! Amazing Spider-Man #51 is a strange issue to return to. It's seemingly written with very little in the way of story in mind. Spider-Man spends the majority of the issue punching goons, while Foswell sweats and Kingpin slowly make moves. It all seems to be build up rather than pay off after the events of issue 50. Even the cover, what should be the thing that sells the issue to readers, is simply the ending of the issue repackaged. This is an issue stuck in flux. It's not that nothing happens, though. We do get some development. JJJ gets kidnapped. This is an era of comics where *so* much can happen in the pages of a single issue, so it's strange get something like this especially after how rushed Spider-Man's retirement and subsequent return to heroism was in the last issue.

When I was really in the swing of things with these reviews, I would always try to break down each issue into the Spidey side of things and the Peter side of things. Something I think is somewhat essential to a good Spider-Man comic is a nice balance of these things. We care about Spider-Man because of his relatable interpersonal struggles, not because of his power set. This issue doesn't really have that. Sure, Peter has to get his old job back at the Daily Bugle, but that's given a single page, and it's barely a problem for him. Aside from that, we get two panels of Peter's friends in this issue. MJ happens to see Peter riding by on his motorcycle and then teases Gwen about how badly she wants to be with Peter. Gwen is Harry's girl, MJ. I'm sure that holds up to the test of time. Aside from this establishing the firm legacy of cuckoldry within the confines of the ASM title (See: Paul, et al.), it does little more than remind readers that these characters still exist.

I give a lot of these older comics a little bit of a pass when it comes to political matters, and that includes how representation is handled. Stan Lee has a particular way of writing women, and it leaves a lot to be desired. His female characters are often totally consumed with their romantic feelings and the men those feelings are afforded to. While I prefer the playful party girl aesthetic MJ has going on to the doting lifelessness that, say, The Wasp or Jane Foster tended to inhabit, it's just switching out one patriarchal stereotype for the other. I usually use these sort of quirks to make jokes, and obviously I made one about Harry above, but this moment is just so abrupt and so in your face that it's hard to gloss over. I can't wait for other writers to come along and give these women some depth. Cattiness and late 60s aphorisms won't work forever.

I wish there was more to say about Kingpin here. We do get our first shock that he's not actually fat, but aside from that (personally I prefer my crime bosses with a little meat on their bones), I don't think he really does anything too exciting here that we haven't seen done with other crime bosses in this same title. He's a brute, that's the big difference. Every crime boss before this was also the smartest crime boss to ever boss crime before. Kingpin can get his hands dirty, and competently so. That's... not enough for me. That's not what drives to read about Kingpin nowadays.

Maybe the concluding chapter of this story arc will give us what was lacking in this issue: A story with real direction, more interpersonal life for Peter, a reason to single out Kingpin, and so on.

Quote of the issue: "With Spider-Man gone, this city is mine!" more