As characters struggle to accept their pasts, reinvent themselves, and control their destinies in Amazing Spider-Man #27, a vicious villain returns to crush their hopes and upset their plans. Read Full Review

After a long detour Amazing Spider-Man is back to what it does best and promises readers the best may still be yet to come. Read Full Review

McGuinness delivers some fantastic art in the issue. I love the visual style of the story and how beautifully detailed and vibrant the imagery is. Read Full Review

Amazing Spider-Man #27 is Zeb Wells's opportunity to make the consequences of Ms. Marvel's death meaningful and get the series back on track. Sadly, Wells falls short of both goals by making Kamala's death a cheap plot device for Peter and Norman's feelings, and the overall tone of the comic is a bizarre mix of seriousness and jokiness. Read Full Review

The Amazing Spider-Manis a yawning man's comic, a mixed bag of setups and wrap ups that ultimately makes for a reading expressed only with a shrug. This could be fine, or it could be more of the same mechanically broken storytelling. Read Full Review

I loved this issue. The interactions between characters are great (except for the kamala stuff, meh), the art suits better than I thought, and the plot seems so interesting.

While I don't like how aggressive Peter is being toward Felicia I get it. What really bothers me is how he came at her but then approaches Norman in a much healthier way. I would kind of expect the opposite. But then, I'm a Felicia fan. It's nice to see how he and Norman are dealing with Kamala's passing and how they both feel responsible but it feels little out of place here. As well with the continuation of the Gold Goblin arc. I'm happy to have it but there is a weird tonal difference in two halves of this book.
I really like the old Ock arms subplot. Honestly made me sad to see how Ock treats them and their desperation to go to Jonah all beat up. How I was made to care about a fake animate object is beyond me but I like it. I liked a lot about this issue and I'm not sure why. Maybe just because it's different and despite the fact that it's a huge leap from what we were dealing with that something fresh is immediately better. more

I think that this was a good issue following the newsworthy, to say the least, Issue 26. You can read how I feel about Kamala's death in my review of that issue, but I thought that this did a nice job of making Peter and Norman feel the impact of what happened. Norman, once again, feels guilty for his past sins and I'm glad that we got (and appear to still be getting) some follow-up to the end of Gold Goblin. As for Peter, him being a bit more violent (as seen in the beginning of this issue during his & Felicia's encounter with Shocker) is an understandable direction for him following Kamala's death. As for the stuff with Doctor Octopus, as another user stated in their review, I can't believe this issue made me feel bad for a set of robotic arms. I'm interested to see where things go with him, especially after the announcement that Superior Spider-Man is supposed to return sometime in the near future. On top of things, we got another case of good art from McGuinness. Speaking of McGuinness, the cover is great and it's crazy how this homage came out just two days after the passing of the legendary John Romita Sr. (if you haven't seen his cover for Amazing Spider-Man #55, go check it out; it's a great cover). more

Full disclosure: not a fan of the last few issues for MANY reasons, but objectively speaking this was good. What’s happening here actually makes sense, people are processing the prior events in believable ways.

I liked the art, but did notice a small miss on the costume. When he was fighting Shocker he had on the “Osborn suit” but when he got back to the apartment it was the normal suit. Not sure if that was meant to be an off page change of clothes but assuming it wasn’t, it was a small attention to detail that I wish was caught.

I did forget the arms had sentience, that threw me for a bit of a loop.

The second year of Wells' run starts out in an odd place. It really feels like the title is playing catch up with itself. I guess that's necessary after a storyline that primarily took place in the past, and before that, one that ended up being a giant waste of time.

This would be a fresh start for the title if not for Ms. Marvel's death looming over everything. By far, the best part of this current era of Spidey is Norman's attempts at redemption, and I'm glad that seems to be taking a focus here again. Gold Goblin's shock-snap ending is finally addressed, which is good as it was very important for Norman's character, but then it's undone by this issue's ending. I'm not shocked by that. Queen Goblin was set up in this run as a villain; it'd be weird for her to simply disappear after the Hobgoblin arc. I feel like it immensely undercuts that Gold Goblin miniseries, though.

And for the other plot, we finally get some sort of follow through on ASM 900. I like that the story that somehow stuck out more than Dark Web is finally being incorporated into the rest of the run, but it creates this really weird tonal whiplash. Peter and Norman are both really down right now over a death they feel very responsible for, but there's a pair of Ock arms that is in love with Peter, and Jonah's getting a taste of his own medicine lol. I wish this issue would've picked a lane and stuck with it. Go dark and have a character driven issue about grief, or do a fresh start and get away from everything for a wacky, fun Doc Ock story. The book's doing a lot of juggling, and I hope it pays off for a satisfying story.

McGuinness' art is overall good, although I thought it was sloppy in places. His art is very clean but, in this instance, I don't think it helps the issue. The tonal back and forth is made worse by an art style that doesn't really have a specific atmosphere to it. You could put McGuinness on any story and it'll look very nice, but it would be on the writer to make it feel a specific way beyond that, and Wells doesn't set the tone here.

Overall, nothing here is bad or poorly written, but it feels like Wells and co. don't know exactly what story they want to tell.

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KittyNone - Jun 16, 2023

This sums up everything I had to say about this issue so well that I don't think I have anything left to say in my own review now that I've read it!

Psycamorean - Jun 16, 2023

Hey, that's nice to hear! I usually hold your opinions in high regard so if I'm hitting the same marks, I must be doing something right.

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"Blockchain of consciousness." That'll age well.

There's a good excuse for the slow place, but it's still slow. The excuse is, this issue is mostly talking about feelings. Lots of remorse. But if the emotions are strong, they're far from unique. Just within this volume it feels like we've done "Norman is genuinely remorseful and Pete is surprised to find he believes him" too often.

This introspective issue lands on a good slot on the artist carousel. Better Ed McGuinness than JRJR when emotions come to the fore. His tormented faces are over-the-top and melodramatic--which actually suits the script.

Editor Nick Lowe has an interesting response on the letters page, in which he defends this volume's decompression. He says they're shooting for "maximum emotion at the risk of quantity of story." It's a pretty big risk, considering how subjective emotional impact is and how much trouble this author has had eliciting it.
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A little corny in parts, but overall a fun/ interesting issue that felt different than a large amount of this run so far.

Decent, I like the direction they're going with Norman and that's pretty much it

The positives: I actually quite like the dynamic between Peter and Norman, and just Norman’s character in general right now. His trauma is justified, and Wells is handling it pretty well. I also like the design of Otto’s new arms, as well as the personification of his regular ones. And I have decided I prefer McGuinness’s art to John Romita Jr.’s.

The negative: I still have a bad taste in my mouth from the Ms. Marvel stuff. I also don’t much care for Black Cat, and I really don’t care for the characterization of Otto. I’m not the first to say it and won’t be the last, but it feels like such a huge step backward for him after Superior Spider-Man.

Overall, this issue is fine, but it didn’t get me excited for more, and I just don’t have any interest in this series anymore. I think this will be the last issue I read until we get a new creative team. more

The art was great. That’s about all this issue has going for it.

Most of this score is for the Art. The art is so much better than JRJR who was either phoning it in, or has lost all his talent. Black Cat looks awesome, Spider-man looks agile, and Norman looks more like how I expect him to look.

The tone was terrible in this book. Like trying to write three issues at once and jam them all into one book.

Invalidates most of the Gold Goblin mini-series.

Doc Ock is written terribly which is a real shame. I was excited for this next arc cause I like him but this looks bleak. His arms seem to have an interesting personality which is one of the only good parts of this issue writing wise.

It's a very odd issue. Like, I don't know what this is trying to be.

It's a continuation to #900 (that we don't need IMO), but 20 issues later. Which already is an odd placement. It's also continuation to Gold Goblin #5, which ended in such non-conclusive way, I didn't expect it to be continued now. It feels more like this is trying up storylines that were forgotten until someone reminded the Spidey office about it. Or maybe the first year was so poorly planned that it caused it to have major pacing issues and messy storytelling. But that couldn't be possible, could it?

Black Cat is back... without any mention where she was during Dead Language arc. Which is... odd? If they setup her to be Peter's love interest for now, you would think she would've had a part in the biggest arc of the Wells' first year in ASM.

It feels like we missed an issue here. I get that Fallen Friend will explore this more, but I would've hoped something here. Because now there is just... some talk between Norman and Peter. It's not bad, but it doesn't feel nearly enough. It doesn't feel like Ms Marvel actually died last issue.

Of course, it doesn't help that she had such a small presence in ASM so that it's hard to really feel anything about her deaht.

Then there is Otto. Whose writing leaves lot to be desired. I don't like this cartoonish take Wells has for Otto. It just feels regressive. And with Superior Spider-Man returning later this year, I don't know what this will accomplish.

I don't have anything good to say about this issue really. Art was nice. I didn't hate it, but... boy did it not leave me with anything to be interested about.

But. It's not the worse issue ever. And if you think it is, you really need to wonder why are you even reading ASM anymore. If last storyline didn't make you stop reading, I can't imagine this one is the one that makes you stop.

If you actually hate this run so much, don't read it. Don't just complain every other week how bad it is, but continue to read it. Because it just gives a picture you want to complain and need something to complain about. And that is just getting tiring. This run deserves criticism, but spamming every other week "FIRE WELLS, WELLS BAD, THIS RUN BAD, HORRIBLE BAD, TERRIBLE, BAD!!!!!" doesn't help anyone.

Because criticize this issue for what it does badly or poorly, not just what previous issues did. If we base whole runs on only some issues, JMS run was terrible (it had both Sins Past and OMD) and Spencer's run too (his final issue, What Cost Victory is a atrocious garbage and dumpster fire that should've been rewritten or never released). more

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BirdmanG07 - Jun 20, 2023

Agree with just about everything you said except one. If you’re a collector or just a huge Spider-Man fan with a limited pull it’s makes a lot harder to drop the book. But 100% agree, criticism should be given where deserved on each book separately. They all make up the story, but each piece is its own and can be viewed differently. I’ve very much disliked most of the recent issues but this one I enjoyed.

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The absolute bare minimum or even lower. Somehow Peter is now Felicia's "boyfriend" out of the blue and Doc Ock's characterization of the last 10 years was thrown in the bin, making him the "Arr Arr Arr big evil" again. Also, Peter is the most depressing character ever as of late and I'm tired as hell of the Gold Goblin storyline.

Everything about Spidey has been average. Do we know when Wells will be replaced? Spencer was not great either, but Wells has been bad as well. Slott looks like a legend compared to these two.

Boring. Lots of big panels for no reason. MJ and Paul are long-forgotten. Have no idea what Peter sees in Black Cat.

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Batmanaholic - Jun 14, 2023

..... what have you never looked at her in her costume or the sober for asm 607? I'll take felicia over mj just like the 606 shows lol.

superstan52 - Jun 15, 2023

Peter is all about "character." Felicia is superficial and not ethical.

Batmanaholic - Jun 16, 2023

You are zero fun as a person.

superstan52 - Jun 16, 2023

And your idea of a gf for S-M is arm candy who looks hot in a costume. Ok, I'll take "no fun" over "superficial with no understanding of character" any day.

Mout - Jun 18, 2023

Long forgotten? Don't you know how to wait? It's been only 2 weeks

superstan52 - Jun 18, 2023

Not exactly on his mind

Psycamorean - Jun 18, 2023

Felicia has a lot of depth to her. Check out MacKay's Black Cat run.

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Boring issue