THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #14 Review: “This is (not) the end”

Amazing Spider-Man #14! Spider-Verse: Part Six! Not exactly the final chapter, not exactly part six, especially considering all of the various tie-ins. Here we are at the end, and while none of the loose ends get tied up, the story finally comes to the part that English teachers would call the Climax. In two weeks, be ready for what Marvel calls the Epilogue, but I’ll call the Resolution.

 My biggest problem with the whole event remains a problem right to the end: pacing. The pacing was all over the map. Some issues went too slow and offered nothing but exposition dumps; other issues crammed major revelations and plot developments into too few pages and felt rushed. This issue is one of the latter, as the final battle against the Inheritors is finally engaged, and just as quickly it’s all pretty much over. Every Spider-Man (and Woman…and Pig…) Ever — at least the ones that are left — rush in and the fight is on. And by fight I mean lots of splash panels of Spider-Folks jumping into the air in cool poses and then… nothing.

At least they all do look cool in their poses. The art has been consistently good throughout the series. Guiseppe Camuncoli and Olivier Coipel share the art duties in this chapter, though I couldn’t really tell which pages belonged to who. Justin Ponsor’s color work remains strong and helps keep the art even over the two different artists.

Slott’s script provides us fewer jokes per page, I guess because it’s time to get serious, though Spider-Ham gets to pull a pretty hilarious stunt and have a couple of humorous exchanges here. And despite my best attempts at jinxing it, Spider-Punk is still kicking around. Otto gets a chance to do something shocking and inappropriate, which is usually great, but here it feels out of character only because I feel like he’d know better. It’s a stupid move and Otto doesn’t make stupid moves. I’ll be honest, I’m going to miss Spidey-Ock when he’s gone.

We’ve got one more chapter to go before we can really put this saga to bed. It has been pretty fun to throw every version of Spider-Man into one big pile at once and see them interact with each other. We got some new characters that have been very interesting out of the deal as well, and in the case of Spider-Gwen at least, some that might stick around. I’ll hold final judgement on the series as a whole until after the Epilogue. I don’t know if any lasting changes will come out of this, especially with Secret Wars on the horizon, but maybe it’s ok if there aren’t any.

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