Where’s Waldo: Amazing Spider-Man #676 Review

Dear Dan Slott: when I spend four dollars on an issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, I have only one expectation. It’s not that the art is always exemplary, or that it end on the finest of pants-shitting cliffhangers, or that it even showcase a member of the supporting cast in an entertaining fashion… which is a good thing since this book contains none of those things.

No Dan; I’m a reasonable man. All I want from an issue of The Amazing Spider-Man is that somewhere, somewhere in the issue there is at least one appearance of The Amazing Fucking Spider-Man.

That’s right – the only appearance of Spider-Man in this issue is on the cover. The only places the word  “Spider-Man” appears are on the cover, the letter column and the in house ad for next month’s Daredevil… where Spider-Man apparently appears more often than he does in this issue of The Amazing Spider-Man.

Instead of a Spider-Man story, what we have here is a battle between the Sinister Six – which I’m sure was a bitchin’ name back in 1964, but which in 2011 sounds like a moniker you adopt when you find out that someone’s already trademarked “Democracy of Douchebags” – and the Intelligencia (The name you grab when you discover even “Sinister Six” has been sponged off the bottom of the barrel).

On the minus side, hearing about a matchup like that will make many comics readers sit up and say: “A battle with the Intelliwhowhatnow?” But on the plus side, it means we get the only appearance of M.O.D.O.K. in a comic book this month except for every Yaris ad in every issue of Marvel comics this month… except for this issue, for some strange reason.

Anyhoo, we open seeing Doctor Octopus getting crammed into a new armored suit that apparently does double duty as a life support system due to Doc Ock’s recent health issues (If I hadn’t been reading Marvel books recently, I’d guess that the health issues are either blindness or hairy palms, what with having six hands at his disposal). This operation is performed by the crack medical team of Electro and Mysterio – a hired goon and a special effects wizard, respectively – possibly because Dr. Howard or either of the Drs. Fine were at golf.

Doc Ock and the Sinister Six (Appearing every Thursday night at the Holiday Inn Armada Room off exit 26 in Randolph!) make a plan to attack the Intelliwhowhatnow to steal a clever weapon of mass destruction, presumably to cause trouble for Spider-Man in some comic book that features Spider-Man, such as perhaps New Avengers or FF. Then violence ensues and M.O.D.O.K. gets punched in the face. Well, he gets punched; being what he is, the face is kind of the default target.

On the art front, it’s Humberto Ramos. The man has a distinct style that is certainly popular, but honestly isn’t my cup of tea. Cartoony and manga-styled, with all big eyes and exaggerated anatomy, it’s just never been the kind of thing that I enjoy; I’m too much an old-school American comics fan, so his stuff has the tendency to drag me out of the story. On the plus side, the inks by Victor Olazaba actually have a tendency to mute some – not all, but some – of the most caricaturized (No, I don’t know if that’s a word) characteristics of Ramos’s pencils. Look: Ramos’s stuff is never gonna be my favorite, but if you like it, here it is… and hopefully the inks that ground the effect for me don’t muddy it for you.

This book isn’t terrible, but it is flawed on it’s face. As the first chapter of a trade paperback, this probably works, but not as an individual issue of a comic book. Call me a purist, but I think a comic should contain the character for whom the book is titled. Imagine walking into a place with a sign that read “Liquor Store” and finding only asbestos for sale. Not only would you never walk into the place again, you couldn’t even burn it down in a fit of rage. It’s Goddamned disappointing, especially considering how good Amazing Spider-Man has been over the past few issues.

It might sound like I’m making fun of this book, and that’s because I am. However, this is not, per se, a bad comic book. There are some nice character moments here, Sandman and Rhino training together and refusing to give up on each other in the heat of battle tells a lot about their long history in the Spider-Man rogues gallery, for example. There are some decent one-liners and the thing is absolutely ram-loaded with action. In reality, it has everything that you might want from a Spider-Man comic book. Except for, y’know, Spider-Man.