Amazing Spider-Man #676 – Review

By: Dan Slott (writer), Humberto Ramos (pencils), Victor Olazaba (inks), Edgar Delgado (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Ellie Pyle (assistant editor) & Stephen Wacker (editor)

The Story: It’s an all supervillain throw-down as the Sinister Six attacks the Intelligencia.

Five Things: 

1. No Spider-Man in this issue. – It’s a very good issue and establishes a lot of stuff, but there is not a single appearance by Spider-Man in this issue.  Not even in one little panel.  And there’s no MJ, Carlie, Jonah, etc.  Everything revolves around the villains and putting them into position for future stories.  The “glass half empty” people will be annoyed by this, but I choose to be happy that this story happened in ASM #676 and not in some special one-shot with a screwed up title like Octopcalypse Alpha #0.  You know someone at Marvel wanted to do that and someone with sense talked them out of it.

2. Really enjoying the arc Dr. Octopus has taken. – Ock is becoming creepy and sinister.  Starting with the storyline from back around ASM #600 where he faced up to his brain damage from years of getting hit in the head by superheroes and continuing here and there in ASM until now, he’s really in a cool place.  You still have the arrogance mixed with a massive inferiority complex that has made him such a good villain all these years, but now he seems to be developing a fatalism about his own mortality.  That’s kinda scary: a supervillain who is working on his bucket list and knowing his days are numbered.  I just hope that Ock keeps going down this path because it’ll piss me off if next year he gets his brain dumped into a new cloned body.  We’ve seen “old Doc Ock” stories a million times.  This is new and fresh.  Let’s keep the character moving forward!

3. Funny. – It’s hard to have the Intelligencia appear and have it not be a funny issue.  Add in a healthy dose of Mysterio and it gets even better.  This battle between the Sinister Six and Intelligencia has a serious side to it with Doc Ock and MODOK fighting, but it’s hard to be completely serious when Red Ghost’s super-apes and the Wizard are around.