Amazing Spider-Man #10

[cyberghostface]

 

A Celestial is judging the Marvel universe. Peter's version of the Celestial is apparently Gwen Stacy. 'Gwen' freaks out upon seeing Peter working for Norman.



'Gwen' (or the Celestial) deems Peter worthy and gives him a 'gift' which is a moment with the real Gwen.

Comments

[blues32]

Okay...so Norman is relapsing already? Or did he get his sins back? I mean you'd think Queen Goblin would get around to knocking on his door by now.

[chalicother]

I was hoping to have "good and repentant" Norman for awhile.

I mean I know Green Goblin is probably Spiderman's most known villain, but he still has a rogues gallery that can be used instead.

Maybe it's the celestial judging Norman with Gwen or his guilty conscience has him see Gwen all the time ?

[cyberghostface]

It’s the former, everyone on Earth is being judged.

[blues32]

I was hoping for that too. And then there were the images of his "Golden Goblin" outfit. Seemed like any sort of reverting was a ways off.

Oh, it's definitely the Celestial judging him, but his whole freak out and telling himself everything is alright is very Goblin-Norman thing to do. And that expression. That sneer. Feels like post Clone Saga Norman.

[blues32]

I mean, they could easily have the Green Goblin around AND have Norman still be "good and repentant". Isn't Bart Hamilton's clone still around? If he is, they need to give Barty Boy a second chance at being the Green Goblin on his own terms, instead of under Ben Reily's control.

[numeronone]

Y'know, it might just be the way this artist draws expressions.

[blues32]

Nobody can be that bad at drawing expression that they can give off that much of an impression of a sneer accidentally. ...I hope.

[numeronone]

I mean, one would hope, but considering how JRjr.'s expressions have been going in this series lately...

[numeronone]

It is the nature of these things that one's most recent actions - and the most historically defining, such as Gwen's death - are those accounted for. Which would plausibly explain the FrankenCelestial glossing over the whole "Made A Deal With The Literal Devil" aspect.

[aperturedreams]

These Celestial judgments are so inconsistent, Spider-Man gets an extra gift despite selling his marriage to the devil, every deviant on Earth passes, but Captain America fails because America is a failure, and one of the regular citizens failed for procrastinating creating a zine. It's hard to take seriously when there's no real baseline. Hawkeye being judged over in Avengers at least established some sort of test.

[aperturedreams]

Well I bought that and hadn't read it yet today but good to know

[numeronone]

Dammit! I'm so sorry, I thought I Rot13'd that. Deleting...

[cainofdreaming]

Well, he's going to spend the rest of the eternity collecting urine for hell's tanning industry, sans limbs. So maybe the Celestial thinks he's already covered for that.

[john_drake1964]

Collecting urine for tanning, even sans arms, sounds slightly better than having to scrape the hides of soon to be leather of hair and fat after it's been through urine and pure baths. At least, having seen an episode of Tony Robinson's "Worst Jobs in History" which covered tannery work and how you'd need a strong constitution to do it...

[numeronone]

Oh wow. Turns out all those jokes in "Asterix and the Soothsayer" about living next to a tannery were dead on...

[john_drake1964]

Generally there was a reason tanning was relegated to outside the city limits of most major settlements. The smell and waste from the process was fairly vile, and few wanted to be anywind of a tannery.

[cainofdreaming]

Fantasy rarely matches the actual horror of real existence, yup. That aside, think how you would carry urine sans limbs.

[akodo_rokku]

To be fair, selling the marriage to Mephisto saved multiple lives and only hurt us. And obviously we don't count.

[zachbeacon]

I mean, it also implied that he was depriving the world of a future heroine who could beat Mephisto so it seems like pretty big failure in-universe too.

[tcampbell1000]

Let's not treat that as a serious factor, because...it's really, really dumb. I'm not trying to call you out on this personally, but it's one of those quirks of the lore that gets me fired up.

"We should've stayed together for the sake of the children" is one thing. It's a flawed argument, but it's one that reasonable people can make. "You should've stayed together for the sake of the being who would've been your kid at some point years in the future" is like taking the current Republican position on abortion and trying to make it somehow even more extreme. I know everyone (else) liked Spider-Girl, but failing to butterfly-effect some version of her into existence should not be considered Peter's fault. Not unless you want to blame anyone who's had a breakup for killing the kids that could've come out of their failed relationships. It's one of the least fair things for anyone to blame Spidey for, and Spidey is of course the champion self-blamer of superherodom. He could probably find a way to blame himself for the black plague of the Middle Ages, given enough prep time.

Mephisto is a master planner, so eliminating a future threat makes some sense for him. It also makes sense for him to want to take love away from one of the most adversity-tested of human spirits, but hey, he's got a lot going on, he can have more than one goal. But I'm not even super into the idea that May would stop him if he didn't "pre-empt" her first. Because the implied logic there is "Spider-Man is our most popular character, so any hero he sires will be the GREATEST HERO OF HER GENERATION EVER."

What sets Spider-Man apart from Superman--and to a degree, Marvel from DC--is that his branding prominence in our universe doesn't translate into his in-universe status. He's come a ways from the "threat or menace?" days, but he's still in the company of heroes who have better toys (Iron Man), are stronger (Thor), or are smarter (Reed Richards), whereas Superman is generally treated as superior all around. (Sure, Batman has flashier toys and detective skills, but that Kryptonian tech is nothing to sneeze at, and Superman is often shown as just a step or two behind Batman in the figuring-things-out race, just to compensate for his physical advantage a little.) Ask the average Marvel citizen who the greatest hero of all time was, and they'd probably say "Captain America." And if you asked them who they'd pick to fight the armies of Hell, or to sire a child who could do so, they'd probably say "Thor." Whereas over in the DC universe, the answers to both questions would be "Superman."

Even this is probably thinking about it too aristocratically. It's more in keeping with Spider-Man's humanism for the Mephisto-ender to be the child of a couple of normal people. No dis meant to the Super-Sons here, but generally, heroism isn't like wealth inequality: you don't get born into it because your parents had a lot of it. You can come into it from entirely unremarkable roots...just like Peter did. That's part of the point Lee and Ditko were trying to make, even if they disagreed on some of the particulars. The "little people" of the world matter. They should matter more than some hypothetical event comic we'll never read, headlining a once-popular character as the personification of a ship.

[zachbeacon]

It absolutely seemed tacked on to explain why the devil would give a shit if he isn't getting any souls out of it.

But it is there in the text so it happened (or, y'know, was prevented from happening)

And we've seen lots of Parker daughters across the multiverse and the only real disappointment is the one from Old Man Logan.

Hell, MC2's Mayday is arguably Marvel's most successful solo heroine.

[tcampbell1000]

True, it is in the text, but lots of things that were in the text were quietly forgotten or later disclosed to be lies. In the near term, this plot point feels like a rickety board on an old deck: it's too much trouble to strip it out and replace it right now, but no one should put too much weight on it until we can afford to replace it.

(I never understood the need to explain Mephisto's motives any further. He hates goodness! He loves our pain! He'd annul every happy marriage if he could! He tries to get souls because he enjoys torturing people, not the other way around! The issues with the original story had less to do with Hell's GNP and more to do with Peter deciding to bargain with Evil Incarnate, the absence of any twist, the artificial stakes, and the puppet strings of editorial having more visibility and weight than any of the characters or plot.)

I'm cool with "heroic legacy" characters, as long as they're at least side by side with newer faces who aren't trading on a famous name, mentor, or parent. With its utter absence of the latter, MC2 feels like John Byrne's Generations or DC One Million, a world where "legacy" gets to grow like kudzu until it strangles out anything else. It feels aimed at what Laura Hudson called "the most enduring and beloved fantasy world of so many aging gamers: the idea that nothing will ever be more important than the things they loved when they were young."

Anyway! This was a pretty nice story about complex and difficult relationships, the ways the past can haunt, and moving on with our lives in ways that wouldn't be easy to explain to our younger selves. As event crossovers go, not bad! And it's only slightly mitigated by the main book, in which the Progenitor is shown to be worse at judging people than Kara DioGuardi. Let's just pretend it's a better judge of spirits for the sake of this one.

[zachbeacon]

I forget, was the fan theory about MJ remembering the deal ever confirmed? If not, it feels less like he's inflicting suffering on people and more like a little private joke Mephisto has to himself.

(Which - I agree - still seems like a thing he'd do)

With 100 issues (more if you count the relaunches) and lots of spin-offs, I think Spider-Girl is more comparable to Ultimate Spider-Man than anything you mentioned.

Your assessment of the Progenitor's Judgements made me realize something; this is just Secret Wars 2 with someone else in the Beyonder role.

(That's not necessarily a complaint because it was expecting it to be yet another Civil War)

[laughing_tree]

YES YES all of this! You've perfectly articulated a bunch of my issues with this stuff. Well said!

[mastermahan]

I'm expecting the revelation that the Progenitor has no idea what it's doing and is just making everything up as it goes. It is less than a day old, after all.

[numeronone]

Also, it does NOT look like Wells/editorial are handling event synergy, er, well. First the Hellfire Gala sets up a plot point that took 3 months to resolve (with barely any consequence for keeping us hanging), and now the "What The Hell Did Peter Parker DO?!?" hook is totally undermined, since it's apparently not significant enough to be even commented upon by a cosmic God-Being whose stated purpose is to judge every human being's moral compass.

[numeronone]

PETER: "I can't even be sure I'm a good person any more...not after what I did"

MJ: "Peter I can't even be seen with you any more. It wouldn't be RESPONSIBLE. Not after what you did!"

FRANKENCELESTIAL:

[shakalooloo]

Was that speech bubble on the cover really necessary? I feel it would have had more impact with Peter being in silent shock.

[scorntx]

But if the cover didn't have Peter saying Gwen, how would we know it was Gwen?

[tcampbell1000]

Considering how apathetic JRJR's covers feel these days, that's a legit concern.

[jlbarnett]

could they convey shock without the bubble? With no text some people might take it as just an art cover

[shakalooloo]

Most covers these days lack text besides the title and credits.

[stubbleupdate]

I always liked Dragotta, and I think this is cool art.

[zachbeacon]

Spider-Man is my favorite Marvel hero and I hate what has been done to him.

At this point the idea that Peter would pass any sort of cosmic judgment is ridiculous.

Maybe he's just coasting on Spiderverse. They've certainly done a better job protecting the Mutliverse than the Exiles, Illuminati, Captain Britain Corps, ect.

[deh_tommy]

I swear to gosh, if Betsy gets a thumbs up after everything she’s done…

[blues32]

Say what? I can't imagine any sort of cosmic judgement Peter wouldn't pass. Even if he messes up, he tries. He doesn't have to, but he tries. His heart is in it. He does what is right, often at his own detriment.

[cainofdreaming]

"Peter Parker. Welcome to the cosmic judgement of the Ruinous Powers of Chaos!"

Slaanesh: "He passes."
Khorne, Tzeentch and Nurgle: "What?! But we..."
Slaanesh: "... to my bedroom."

She/he likes them nimble.

[shakalooloo]

All of that applies to Steve Rogers as well, and he failed...

[zachbeacon]

Steve also has a better track record when it comes to being on the right side of superhero conflicts and never made any deals with demons.

Plus there's whatever this "unforgivable " thing Peter did during the timeskip.

[numeronone]

Suddenly realised what all these faces remind me of:

[scorntx]

Calling it now:
Norman trying to work out which bits of "Sins Past" actually happened and to whom is what drives him completely insane again.

[cainofdreaming]

Well, at least he didn't stumble right into the deep end and try to figure the Pym/Summers family trees and where they intersect. He'd have gone Mauve, or maybe even Plaid, Goblin.

[zachbeacon]

"Wait, so is Scarlet Witch Magneto's kid or not?"

[zachbeacon]

Also, I've seen something online in relation to JRJR that I see all the time with writers but never with other artists.

People are furious at him for shit he didn't do.

How could anyone mistake this for JR Jr art?