Only The Young Die Good
Let's just get through this one.
Let us not put any sort of preamble between the question and its answer; you want to know, from a source that has been kinder to this run than most, whether or not The Amazing Spider-Man #26 is as bad as it has been made out to be by the world at large in the couple of weeks that have followed the leak of its biggest plot twist. I will tell you, right here and right now, that indeed it is. It is a bad comic. You should not buy it, and, were it at all possible, you should not read it. It is a creatively bankrupt affair, whose only achievement will be setting the bar for how bad a corporate comic can get in this decade, which is all the more impressive considering that most of it is still ahead of us. In other words: this is the real McCoy of bad comics. This is the Identity Crisis. This is the Sins Past. This is not the Heroes in Crisis, because, once more and always, fuck you Heroes in Crisis is good, but it is the new generational touchstone for what a bad comic is.
So far, the bulk of the discourse around the issue has focused on its last six pages, the ones that have leaked, and which feature the death of Ms. Marvel and its immediate aftermath. These pages are exceptionally poor, for reasons that have already gone through ample discussion and which will be worth restating later, but it goes a bit beyond that. These six pages are so bad that they drag the remaining twenty-five down with them, and make it a bad issue. And that issue itself is so bad, and its nature as the outcome of all that has come before so inescapable, that it makes the year or so of comics preceding it bad in turn. As it turns out, they had been right all along, and I had been wrong: Zeb Wells' The Amazing Spider-Man run is a disaster.
But don't let that fool into thinking I'm going to let those first twenty-five pages off the hook, mind you: this started as a deeply mediocre comic, and it only got worse from there. It is, supposedly, the big confrontation between Spider-Man and the Emissary, the foe so deadly he managed to send Peter Parker's life into a tailspin for the better part of a year, but it hardly feels like it. The fighting and the posturing is rendered completely pointless by the absurd power levels at play; Spider-Man can kick and scream all he wants, he's just not doing anything that could halt Rabin or his plans, and all of this had been true from the moment he was a Spider-Man and Rabin had been an invincible Mayan math god.
With those stakes and their corresponding drama safely neutered, the issue can turn to its main focus: the logistics puzzle of getting its characters to the places where they need to be in order for the story to end in the way it does. Thrill and marvel as your favorite web-slinger sends your favorites, Gold Goblin, Ms. Marvel, and the Fantastic Four, out for errands that barely matter, until one does because it has to. And if all this wondering whether someone is where they ought to be at that point in time action is not enough for you, strap in for an absolutely pointless flashback, revealing information that has no bearing whatsoever on the story being told, and only put there to advance a drama that has no other purpose but to obfuscate the turn you already know the story will take.
This is where, at last, we get to the bloody heart of the matter: the sacrifice of Kamala Khan, an editorial decision so stupid, cruel and pointless that it can't really be understood without some serious reverse-engineering. To that end, let us do what no one else in comics will do this week, and express some empathy for Spider-Man editor Nick Lowe by walking a mile in his shoes.
The year is 2023, and The Amazing Spider-Man #121, one of the most important comics of all time, arguably the point at which the Silver Age of Comics died and made way to the Bronze Age, is about to turn 50. In that comic, Gwen Stacy, who had been a supporting character and on-again off-again romantic interest for a little over seven years, and Peter's official girlfriend for two, died, from a combination of the Green Goblin's machinations and Spider-Man's inexperience. In the spirit of commemoration, you decide this milestone should be celebrated with a massive headline-grabbing death of its own.
The biggest, most obvious and most high-profile move at your disposal would be to kill Mary-Jane Watson, Gwen's erstwhile rival, turned since from love interest to girlfriend to wife to currency to ex you're still friends with to girlfriend again. Problem one: killing a man superhero's love interest has become old hat since mother of all online comic book haters Gail Simone pointed out it was kinda fucked that Major Force killed Alexandra Dewitt and desecrated her body by shoving it inside Kyle Rayner's fridge. Problem two: Mary-Jane Watson is a pretty profitable piece of intellectual property, whose appearance on any given variant cover can still fetch a pretty penny, and your bosses love any penny they can get. So, you can't do that.
You can, however, fake like you're going to kill Mary-Jane. First, you have to devise an appropriately deadly danger, which you can force into her path by any means necessary, like for instance the completion of an ancient ritual that requires her and only her to die. Then, you can start teasing her death outright. What if her death was a just punishment for some kind of transgression, like, say, leaving Peter for another man, and maybe even being the mother of his kids? Admittedly, it would be pretty fucked up, in a sexist "women are prizes that men are supposed to compete over" kind of way, but remember: this is direct market comics, the readership is pretty small-c conservative, and they're mostly men, so they're hook, line, and sinker on that shit; they're going to see MJ with a new man and they're going to make a lot of noise, and noise is good for you because it builds up the brand. (Look: if you're into "women having agency" or whatever, have her strapped to a machine that gives her powers but might kill her at random, if that's something you even care about.) And then, as a kicker, give Peter a new girlfriend! She'll be there for him in the way MJ was when Gwen died! So absolutely you're killing MJ!
Except, again, you're not. So there's still the matter of finding a suitable victim for you to kill. They have to be high-profile, but entirely disposable. If at all possible, they should allow you to keep the fakeout going until the very last moment. On the first front, our criteria should include international news headlines, their own solo title, and at least one major film or TV appearance. On the second, they should not have had an ongoing book in a while, so as to keep everyone else's plans safe and sound. Finally, let's keep things simple and have them be a shapeshifter. Put it all together, and, voila: we are killing Ms. Marvel. Sorry, it just wasn't your day. What we have here, then, is a foolproof hit.
Unless, of course, it turns out that people still really really like Ms. Marvel, and see this whole enterprise for what it is: a shallow and cynical cash grab sacrificing a beloved character whose stories resonated with a part of your readership that had been criminally underserved by the direct market in the name of selling tickets to gawkers wishing to see the trainwreck and worthless variants to the speculators. If anyone starts bringing up the fact that there is little to no crossover between Peter and Kamala, who shared all of three issues together before this run of The Amazing Spider-Man, none of which had been in any of the Ms. Marvel ongoings, and that Kamala was so non-essential to Spider-Man that Zeb Wells only wrote her for all of fourteen pages, until Wednesday's issue doubled the total, we are fucked. Same goes if anyone remembers that Kamala had sworn off from shapeshifting into other people in her own series. Then it all kinda falls apart, doesn't it?
"But don't worry", the people in charge will say, "this is death in contemporary comics, and you've just hit the jackpot! Now come pick up your complimentary commemorative one-shot and mini-series obviously leading up to a resurrection!" like the death itself was the problem, and not the circumstances that surround it. Yes, Mar-Vell, Steve Rogers, and Stephen Strange to name but a few have gone through it, and several of them have come out stronger through the other side. Critically, however, that all played out in their stories. It spurned their supporting characters into action, and it was all given ample space to develop on their own. This is not that! This is a plot development in the Spider-Man book, for the sole benefit of Spider-Man. It is a textbook case of some fucked shit. I don't want to explain all the ways in which this is fucked up, and luckily I don't have to, because everyone else will do it.
Instead, I'll tell you one more thing about this book, and hopefully that will demonstrate beyond any possible doubt how shallow, petty and cynical this whole issue is. Remember how Mary Jane and Paul were raising some kids? Well, those kids get erased from reality in all of one page. They were one of the most controversial developments in this run of Spider-Man, and all of a sudden they're nothing. That page leaked, and people were celebrating. Surely, this wasn't unexpected. This is a comic that hedged against its own unpopularity, and decided it had to give some kind of a win to its loudest haters. You've served your purpose as a bluff, now be good kids and disappear. That's a fucking mission statement right there.
There is so much to hate about this comic, and we'll have so long to talk about its many failures that cutting it now, after having said so much in such a total mess of a way, still feels appropriate somehow. I could have gone on for a while about its complete waste of John Romita Jr, who finds himself suddenly asked to stop being dynamic and wildly expressive to get Serious and Solemn, with results that are already infamous. But I don't really have to and I'd rather talk about comics that make me happy. The points are: The Amazing Spider-Man #26 is a bad comic, this run is dead to me, and I don't think Zeb Wells is worth paying attention to anymore.
AND NOW, A FEW WORDS ABOUT SOME COMICS THAT MADE ME HAPPY
If the joyfully reckless X-Terminators was the comic book equivalent of the original Jackass film (and I will be saying it is for as long as I need this sentence to work), then this week's Power Girl Special is Leah Williams' Jackass Forever. On a fundamental level, it has that same commitment to total earnestness, to the point where characters are going on at length about their feelings and their motivations, but it somehow works without being overwrought because it is laser-focused on its sentimentality. For as bright and as beautiful as the team of Marguerite Sauvage and Marissa Louise make it look (and, hot damn, not only is that book beautiful but it also has some incredibly clever storytelling tricks), this is a book carrying the heavy melancholia of loneliness and grief. Of course, it gets resolved, with all the beauty and all the power that is fit for a Power Girl comic. It's career-best work for this creative team, and I think it's only gonna get better from there. Check it.
It's not really a surprise that DC Pride 2023 made me happy, but it's still very neat. Obviously, the headline will be Grant Morrison returning to the Multiverse, dropping the kind of comic that only they can make, bold and powerful and tinged with the sharpest of satirical edges, and making it all look ludicrously easy, but do not sleep on what is, for all intents and purposes, just a very fun time, with all the romance, adventure and acceptance, with just enough of that tasteful filth and innuendo, that such an occasion requires by law. Its main petition of principle is that it should be fun to be queer and a comic book fan, and, by gum, it pulls it off. So there.
And that's gonna do it! That's all there is to say about it! It's a bit of a mess, admittedly, but I don't really feel like that comic deserved any better! Until the happy days return, and until the conversation is taken over once more by good comics, we'll stand guard and look for the good stuff! In the mean time, locate me on the one good social media website, remain true to the path of beauty, and, as ever, HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS!