Amazing Spider-Man #74

[cyberghostface]

"Harry" is impaled.



So not sure where to begin here...

For some reason Harry!Kindred is now Gabriel and Sarah Kindred. The Harry "clone" is treated more or less as being the real Harry.

If you were expecting One More Day to be undone or for the marriage even acknowledged as Spencer and Marvel have both been playing at (heck just look at the cover, they know what they're doing)... you're out of luck. We do learn why Mephisto has it in for Spidey (because either Spidey and/or his daughter is the one who will take him down) but there is no big reveal in relation to Peter selling his soul/unborn child to Mephisto. That whole thing with Doctor Strange meeting with Mephisto and discussing Peter's soul and gambling for it? Well it turns out Doctor Strange was gambling for Harry's all along.

In retrospect I think Dan Slott is owed an apology for people acting like he could have undone OMD because now its clear Spencer wasn't able to either.

Comments

[tinygaylaura]

I didn't think it was possible but this is actually somehow even worse than the absolute garbage that was Dan Slott's Spider-Man run

Also are we meant to think Harry is heroic here?

Because I mostly think this decision is utterly moronic

Put simply: People like Norman Osborn are people whose lives don't matter

Harry sacrificing his life to save the live of this repulsive abusive parasite on society is not only idiotic in universe it's also so awful its actually offensive. Harry suffered for years being abused by Norman and we're supposed to view it as noble or heroic that he throws his life away to save the life of the absusive psychopathic piece of shit that made his life a living hell because...what, we're supposed to feel sad for Norman and his poor pwecious widdle feewings here?

[blues32]

So...is Norman depowered? I know his sins were removed, but is he normal now? And if his sins are gone, where did they go? When Sin-Eater was originally killed by Kindred, all the sins he absorbed returned where they belonged. So that means the Green Goblin went somewhere else. ...oh, do you think it went to the Bart Hamilton clone?

[scorntx]

So much to say about this... and no idea where to start.
Here goes.

This was a very, very, very odd run, even without the Kindred stuff. And without that, it'd probably just be an "eh" run, all things told.
Really wondering what people are going to be saying about it in ten years time.

I read this issue in full, and... I'm still confused as to what the actual crap is meant to be going on with Kindred. So he's not actually Harry at all, but demon clones of Gabe and Sarah who were downloaded into new bodies by Mephisto and whaaaaaaat.
Could Spencer just not resist making one last pointless twist?
(Pretty sure waaaaaay back before the first big reveal of who Kindred was, I joked that he'd turn out to be a robot ghost clone.
So yeah.
But at least Kindred didn't turn out to be a time traveler. Or Ms. Lion.)

This is not exactly helping the image that Spencer was quite possibly literally dragged out of the Spidey office at Marvel kicking and screaming.
Or just told to wrap everything up pronto like and GTFO, because this really does, despite the length of the issue, read like a rush job.
But the kicking and screaming idea feels plausible at this point.
Possibly with Spencer dressed up as Kindred.

Um. Anyhoo.
So that was seventy-three issues, not counting the tie-ins and one-shots and what not, all building up to... what, exactly?
Harry turning out to be a clone who is now dead again?
Alright. Fine. Whatever.

Wasn't really expecting the Spider-Marriage to be restored.
I don't actually know if I was expecting anything on that front.
But at least nothing hideous and contrived happened to Peter and MJ's relationship.
yay?

Speaking of lingering questions: Is Theresa okay? Last I saw she was having an identity crisis. She is okay, right?

[cyberghostface]

I wasn’t expecting the marriage to be restored but I was thinking there would be some reveal where Peter and MJ discover what happened.

Theresa is okay as far as “I don’t need to know who I am, I’ll make my own destiny” goes.

[zachbeacon]

How dare you besmirch the good name of Ms. Lion!

She defeated the Chameleon.

Just like Mary Jane.

And Aunt May.

I think Dmitri might be bad at this super villain thing. Oh well, building the robot parents for Harry was still pretty impressive and it isn't like they'd try to retcon that away from him and give a lot of the credit to Robot Master, right? Right?

Actually, now that I think about it, the Mary robot turned on him too. Maybe he just can't beat Parker women.

(Haven't actually read the recent arc with him and Teresa so I don't know how that goes for him overall).

[nyadnar17]

............................

I have no words, just angry dots. OMD still stands. Harry I guess is still fucking dead..............Osborn is still alive..........May Parker confirmed to have been wiped from existence

[shakalooloo]

How did Kindred Brown get between Norman and the door? He had his eyes ON HIS SON while he was fighting the monster, saw it knock him down and still somehow got outmanoeuvred by it? And despite this burst of super-speed, Harry is still able to interpose himself in the the time it takes the centipedes to stab forward, somehow even faster still?

[aperturedreams]

Did they just change Kindred's identity between issues? The previous issue made it seem like Kindred was still Harry, but now he's Sarah and Garbiel? What?

[cyberghostface]

Yeah I have no idea whatsoever what's going on. The previous issue kind of indicated that it was Harry possessing their bodies but this issue shows that they still believe they are Sarah and Gabriel (I.E. still believing Gwen was their mother).

The whole thing is a clusterfuck.

[armycat23]

I haven't read this series arc in its entirety....but it feels like such a waste of opportunities and an insult to the readers' anticipation if this is what it's all been about. Seems more of a let down than what the teen titan series featuring Tron suit superboy ended up being.

[zachbeacon]

I looked at the preview for this issue this morning and I really hope JM and Sal got paid for the uncredited reprint of their work.

I mean this entire run has been stealing from that Spectacular run that Marvel refuses to collect but that first page was just egregious.

[cyberghostface]

I do think JM and Sal deserve more credit but it's fairly common nowadays for Marvel to reuse old pages/panels for the purposes of a flashback (if not using the same exact page then doing a nearly identical duplicate like when Bendis used Amazing Fantasy #15 and inserted Jessica Jones into the background for Alias).

That being said J.M. DeMatteis is going to be writing a new title for Marvel (a Ben Reilly book) so hopefully they're doing right by him.

[deh_tommy]

That’s a shame, I liked this run for the most part but I feel like that kind of fell apart near the end.

[tinygaylaura]

In the interest of being fair I will say perhaps I was overly harsh in calling this run worse than Dan Slott's. Unlike Slott's run there were stories from this run I liked.

The Black Cat three parter was good and so was the Sinister Syndicate story. Hunted was okay for what it was. Some of the earlier issues were quite good as well especially the one where J Jonah Jameson confronts the legacy of what his anti-Spider-Man paranoia has created when he learns that Frederick Foswell's son became a Spidey hating supervillain entirely because all of Jonah's "Spider-Man: THREAT OR MENACE?" ranting convinced him he was to blame for his dads death

[numeronone]

Well if anyone's a poster child for switching the retcon to a different, similarly stupid retcon because of negative audience reaction...it's the twins...

[dragontail]

*applause*

[dan_ingram]

Peter, the guy you're kicking in the head for the sake of Gwen's memory is no more than 9 years old, and his brain is flooded with fake memories.

You ain't the only victim, buddy.

[cyberghostface]

There’s only so much compassion you can show to someone trying to kill you.

[tinygaylaura]

Spider-Man

Spider-Man

Does whatever a spider can

Beats up kids

Any size

Whose heads are

Filled with lies

OH NO

Stop doing that Spider-Man

[zachbeacon]

So suddenly it occurs to me that the people who speculated that "bug guy"* was Gwen were half right. Well, maybe a quarter.

Still think it should have been Liz and not obviously Harry followed by a series of dumb last minute retcons.

I never expected OMD to be undone but it's still pretty shitty to spend an entire run teasing the possibility when you had no plans to do it.

*If they wanted us to call them "Kindred" then they should have given them a name sooner.

[tinygaylaura]

Having the reveal be that Kindred was Gwen Stacy would have made for such a better twist. But it also might have dared to question some of the fandoms perception of her as Blessed Saint Gwen Who Can Do No Wrong

Some other possible suspects who would have made a better twist than this and also would have made more sense

1) The Burglar Who Shot Uncle Ben

2) The original Ben Reilly

3) Jason Macendale, why not, every other Goblin comes back

4) That wrestling promoter who wouldn't give Spidey his money, honey

5) Yaartek, leader of the Alien Voord

6) The clone of Gwen Stacy

7) Uncle Ben

8) Flash Thompson

9) Somehow it's Norman Osborn again, do not question or examine the plot

10) Mendell Strom, THE ROBOT MASTER

[dragontail]

I gave up on Spidey comics just prior to OMD and have only dabbled in the years since. When Spencer started, my LCS gave me a copy of his first issue as a "taster", hoping I'd enjoy it. I did, and read the book for the next 24 or so issues. Around issue 25 it lost me again - felt like it was just spinning its wheels - so I dropped it. Having heard internet chatter about the past few issues, I decided to grab #73 and #74 last night, digitally, to see how it all ended.

Wow. I expected to dislike it, but I didn't think it would be this actively *poor* in execution.

Agree totally with everything said above by everyone, and have more issues of my own besides. Just on a nerdy canon level, for example, Mendel Strom wasn't resurrected until *after* Harry's corporeal death (I mean he was alive, due to the prototype Goblin formula, but in his grave under suspended animation). So he couldn't have been involved in making Pete's "parents". For a run that hinges so much on old canon, that was a weird miss that made my nerd-brain itch.

I'd appreciate the little metatextual point that the devil taking away Pete and MJ's future as parents robs the world of its saviour, and that saviour is a character loved and missed by so many, and legacies in comics are cool and so on... if I thought it was an actual metatextual point and not another bait-and-switch. Or worse, a lead-in to an eventual all-Marvel Mephisto-focused crossover event (surely that's coming, right?).

But for me, the major storytelling sin of Spencer's run is that, at the end of #74, Pete and MJ are in precisely the same place as they were at the end of his first issue. Namely, together and in love. I get comics are the illusion of change and all, but three years of writing and stories have made no greater impact on the characters and their world than did the first handful of pages. That's incredibly reductive and annoying to me.

There are many reasons why my personal Spidey canon starts at Amazing Fantasy #15, encompasses Amazing Spider-Man #1 through #441, then continues into What If? #105 and all of the Spider-Girl titles. Marvel and the creative choices of its Spider-writers and editors just keep reinforcing those reasons.

Ah well. At least the new Darkhawk series is cool!

[thumbs13]

I liked, like very specific issues of this book (the one with Jameson and the big man was one of my favorite's), but the Kindred stuff weighs down everything else heavily.

[beyondthefringe]

And after all that, the greatest mystery of Spider-Man history is solved.
No, not "who is F.A.C.A.D.E really?"
No... "who is Kindred?"
"Well," says the answerbot, "Kindred is actually Sarah and Gabriel Stacy, a pair of clones created by an evil Harry Osborn AI to believe they're the secret children of Norman Osborn and Gwen Stacy, and empowered by Mephisto as part of a long-ranging plot against Norman Osborn and Peter Parker."
And then we all have drinks.

What a shitshow of a saga that was. I mean, how do you combine the absolute worst parts of Spider-Man history (One More Day, Sins of the Past, and the Clone Saga) into something just as bad, if not worse?

[zachbeacon]

Putting aside that - while it was a directionless mess - the Clone Saga had enough great stuff that it doesn't deserve to be mentioned alongside that other stuff...

...the Spencer run also takes a lot from some of the best of late 80s and early 90s Spider-Man.

Granted I really wouldn't expect a sandwich made of high quality toppings on moldy bread to be very good but Defalco built MC2 on a foundation that included Gathering of the Five and Final Chapter so it can be done.

[tcampbell1000]

Unlike most people here, I am mostly relieved this didn't turn out to be a fix-fic on "One More Day." The idea that OMD was some horrible sin Peter committed, which is where things seemed to be going, left a bad taste in my mouth.

Now, OMD is not a great story, and tying it to some future Marvelpocalypse where the Spider-daughter kills(?!?!) Mephisto is not making it much better. And killing off Harry here honestly seems like a waste, and it does not send a great message. No matter what he's done to try to build a better life in the shadow of abuse and cloning, it seems, he just can't escape those nods to continuity and he dies affirming that his death is what's "supposed to happen" because of some well-liked story from the Nineties. Fuck that. Life is too precious to believe any chance at it is undeserved.

But in terms of Mary Jane and Peter, I think the ending of this story was exactly right. A marriage, a relationship, is not about magically fixing every bad thing in its own past. It's about moving on together. And yes, this particular relationship was once sundered by magic, but two wrongs do not make a right.

Plus, Kindred's plural name finally makes some fuckin' sense.

[zachbeacon]

"Unlike most people here, I am mostly relieved this didn't turn out to be a fix-fic on "One More Day." The idea that OMD was some horrible sin Peter committed, which is where things seemed to be going, left a bad taste in my mouth."

I mean at this point I feel like OMIT absolved Peter of guilt and threw MJ under the bus anyway.

" And killing off Harry here honestly seems like a waste,..."

I get where you're coming from but bringing a character like Harry back and then doing nothing interesting with them is also a pretty big waste. Why undo a perfectly good story only to put a character in the background for a decade?

When they first started telegraphing that Harry was Bug Guy my reaction* was "this is obvious and stupid but at least they're FINALLY doing something with him"

*Aside from "what if its Flash?" and "it should be Liz"

"Plus, Kindred's plural name finally makes some fuckin' sense."

I was just thinking that. I mean it kind of works if Harry is Kindred and he defines himself by his relationship to Norman and/or Peter but it really works when "Kindred" is a matching set.