Amazing Spider-Man #693
Written by Dan Slott
Pencils by Humberto
Ramos
Inks by Victor Olazaba
Colours by Edgar
Delgado
Story
Spider-Man and the
Fantastic Four clean up the mess left by Alpha in #692. Peter drops
by MJ's for some advice on how to deal with Alpha. Alpha gets caught
cheating on Chrissy with a cheerleader and the Jackal and his
'daughter' appear and capture Alpha and his family. Peter goes to
Horizon to build an 'Alpha locator' with the help of Max Modell.
Tracking down Alpha, Spidey is attacked by Jackal's spiderqueens.
Spidey plays possum and discovers that Jackal is a clone. Another
Jackal clone tells of his plan to clone Alpha to create a race of
Alpha-males. The clones are a failure, Alpha breaks loose and Jackal
pushes the big red button that dissolves his clones. Peter goes back
to Horizon to find a way to remove Alpha's power.
Review
I'm going to come out
with it: I hate Alpha! I really do. But maybe that's the point of the
character – a character that's so damn hateable that it distracts
you just enough so that you don't notice how bad the story actually
is.
Slott is dealing with
some pretty heavy themes here: nature versus nurture, playing God,
and the ever present 'with great power comes great responsibility.
The problem is it doesn't quite take.
Nature versus nurture
is dealt with, in a way, with the cloning aspect of the story.
However, such a theme needs more than two stand-out pages – the
reveal of the Alpha clones not having the alpha energy powers, and
the way Alpha kills them all, declaring: 'Without [my powers] I'm a
nobody! No better than these stupid, worthless things!'
Peter playing God is
very clumsily dealt with on the final page where MJ comes to Horizon
Labs with some tapas for Peter because she hasn't seen him in days
and finds him working hard at some fancy looking machines. Peter
tells how he has tricked Alpha by telling him that is he sticks with
the sidekicking and shows up for regular tests, there'll be a spot
for him in the Avengers. What Peter is really doing is trying to find
a way to take Alpha's powers away without killing him. I say this is
clumsily done because of the role Mary Jane plays. Anyone who has
seen Doctor Who will know that the purpose of the companion is to be
the audience, to ask the Doctor the questions they themselves can't
ask – 'What's that Doctor?', 'Why are you doing that Doctor?', and
that is basically what MJ is doing and what Peter basically says is
that he has every say in Alpha having his powers – he made him, so
he can unmake him.
I'm sure as a
Spider-Man reader you are more than aware of the phrase 'with great
power comes great responsibility' and it's a lesson Peter had to
learn the hard way with the death of his Uncle Ben, and what we have
here is a superhero with all the power in the universe but absolutely
no sense of responsibility. He's rude, he's selfish, he's arrogant;
basically, he's a douchebag. To be quite honest, though, that's
exactly what everyone at Alpha's age would be like. In fact, I think
that's his only relateable characteristic.
It's not all bad,
though – the artwork is superb. The action scenes are amazingly
dynamic, 'Princess' and the spider queens are imaginative (and a
little scary), and more that a couple of the Jackel's facial
expressions had me in fits of giggles. There's more than enough great
stuff to ignore Mary Jane's occasionally mannish features.
Conclusion
This issue has me a
little torn. On the one hand there are a few swings-and-misses with
regard to the plot, and Alpha being a hateable douche, but on the
other hand there are a few things that could potentially be
breadcrumbs leading us along the road to the landmark issue 700 that
will 'change everything'. We'll just have to wait and see.
Read this issue? Let me
know! I'd love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment or hit me up on
Twitter. Cant wait to hear from you.
Nick
