Amazing Spider-Man #68 (2025) Review
Summary: Marvel just thinks this can go on ad nauseam. Bad writing, mediocre art, and a story that feels like it has gone on for 357 issues add up to one thing and that's definitely not a flagship character. Just make the flagship title X-men and leave Peter alone.
1
SELFISH
Background – Peter FINALLY puts on his suit and dies.
Writing – This will be a QUICK recap. Cyra (Cyttorak’s kid) shows Peter that Shay, Randy Robertson, and Aunt May (and a random guy named Ricardo) have died. Peter begs Coulson to use the remaining four reeds to bring them back, which Coulson reluctantly does. Peter goes to confront Callix, Cyttorak’s other child who has been infected with “The Blight”. While Peter and the X-Men fight back, Callix breaks Peter’s neck.
Did I miss an issue? What the heck just happened? We spent the past FOUR (maybe more, I stopped keeping track) issues of Peter Parker, the hero who NEVER QUITS, walking around like a nihilist. That would have been remotely interesting if it had been presented as more than people trying to make him feel better and Peter just walking around going “nope!”. All of a sudden, he sees May, Randy, and Shay (who I’ll get to more about in a second) die and NOW he cares? What about the rest of the people on Earth? He didn’t care enough about a whole planet full of living things, but his Aunt dying made him care? REALLY!?What about this makes him heroic? I’ll tell you: NOT A THING. This is actually worse than when he gave up his marriage to save May’s life, because technically Mary Jane did that for him. This has been 2 months of Peter being the most selfish person on the planet.
As a quick note about Shay. She broke up with Peter 2 (?) issues ago, but I guess they are together again in the reboot series? How is that a thing? Shay either stay’s or she goes, because right now she has quit their relationship almost as many times as Sunfire quit the X-Men in 1975
Artwork – The artwork is just… meh? The third panel of the book, which displays the X-men in the background fighting demon dogs is… I can’t even describe it. The X-men’s faces don’t even look like Andrea tried. All of them look like they just have 3 lines on their faces that denote facial features. Hell, Magik doesn’t get a dot as a nose like the other 3 do. The best panel comes from the standard superhero charge, but even then that’s not that great. Psylocke’s face changes in damn near every panel she’s in and Scott’s age bounces around more than Speedball. Andrea Broccardo has created some amazing looking stuff. This is not part of that category.
Final Thoughts –I think Marvel just thinks we’re going to buy this book ad nauseum. Yes, there are some people that will go to a store every two weeks and buy an issue of Amazing Spider-Man because that’s what they do, but for the rest of us, we actually read the book and hope to have good stories. No marriage? Fine, we have Ultimate Marvel for that. But this? This isn’t even good storytelling. They have made their flagship hero into a completely unlikeable guy who only cares about his personal problems. After all that, that doesn’t even cover new readers. If I was a kid who saw a Spider-Man movie or cartoon and wanted to buy my first Spider-Man comic, I would feel INCREDIBLY RIPPED OFF. We’ve had issue after issue of Spider-Man on the cover and we’ve had ZERO Spider-Man. What kid would want to read that? Marvel doesn’t care and soon neither will we.
1/5 (I’d give this zero if I could but the system won’t let me).
Publisher: Marvel
Writer: Justina Ireland
Penciler: Andrea Broccardo
Inker: Scott Hanna
Colorist: Marcio Menyz
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagna
Cover Artists: Patrick Gleason / Richard ISanove
Genre: Superhero
Format: Monthly
Release Date: 2/22/2025
About the Author
Matt Fischer Lover of all things nerdy. Reader of Comics for over 25 years. DC encyclopedia. X-Men historian. Spider-Man and Marvel lover. Indie side guy.
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