Amazing Spider-Man #49 Review: Fighting With No Conclusion

Much like this week's Batman #100, Amazing Spider-Man #49 is a "landmark" issue (if you add the old numbering this is #850, but they restarted it, so does that even count?) amounts to much ado about nothing as all the sturm und drang of a gigantic slobberknocker amounts to next to nothing being different than you'd normally assume.

 

The murderous Sin-Eater has reborn with a new shtick — blasting criminals with a shotgun, leaving them completely reformed and powerless, those powers flowing into Sin-Eater. Already on his playlist is a host of very wild abilities: Count Nefaria, Whirlwind, the Living Laser, and Mister Negative, just to get warmed up. In the last panels of the previous issue, the unstoppable Juggernaut caught a blast, meaning he's the next set of powers in the blender. Alongside a horde of fanatical Sin-Eater followers in green baklavas, the Sin-Eater besieges the Ravencroft Institute for the Criminally Insane (imagine Arkham Asylum in the Marvel Universe), intent to eat the sins of Norman Osborn. Only Spider-Man stands in the way, and all his arachnid-related friends in "The Order of the Web" (Ghost Spider/Spider-Gwen, Miles Morales, Silk, Madame Web, Spider-Woman, another Spider-Woman) argue about whether or not Sin-Eater should be allowed to shoot Osborn.

Many people — including people in this comic — think the whole "fight to save Osborn" is stupid. Osborn does something extremely Osborn-y that is so retrograde and so exhausting that it's like that one person at karaoke who tries to sing the same song later in the night.

There are some backup stories that are okay, even as the Beatles-themed one seemed a little dated.

There is a laundry list of talented people working on this issue. Still, the retrograde nature of this reset heavy storytelling leaves a "story" with no consequences, fighting with no conclusion, thunder with no lightning. Watching Peter Parker suffer is not enough to call this entertainment, and this degree of production budgets and values could be used in much better fashions. RATING: NO. JUST … NO.

Amazing Spider-Man #49