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Amazing Spider-Man #552
Just Blame Spider-Man
Credits
Writer: Bob Gale
Pencils: Phil Jimenez
Inks: Andy Lanning
Colors: Jeromy Cox
Letters: VC’s Cory Petit
Assistant Editor: Thomas Brennan
Editor: Stephen Wack-Her
Executive Editor: Tom Brevoort
Editor-In-Chief: Joe Quesada
Publisher: Dan Buckley
Spidey’s Braintrust: Gale, Guggenheim, Slott, Wells
Synopsis
Mt Sinai Hospital: JJJ still doesn’t know his newspaper has been sold by his wife to Dexter Bennett!
At The DB!, Bennett is mocking up headlines regarding the Spider-Tracer murders and ordering his staff around with little knowledge of the business! He orders Peter over to the funeral of Lisa Parfrey, the mayor candidate killed by Menace, where he sneaks in and spots Deputy Mayor Wexler talking to Bill Hollister, Lily and Harry.
After selling a photo to The DB!, Peter makes his way across town to see Aunt May at the FEAST Project. Soon after he arrives, the man nicknamed Freak grabs the donation box and legs it! Peter chases as Spider-Man and, after ripping his costume and getting it covered in cement, webs Freak up and attempts to retrieve the money which gets throws off a roof. Police officers Vin Gonzalez and Alan O’Neil arrive on the scene and Vin tries to arrest Spidey! Spidey swings off, pointing them in the direction of Freak but when they get there they find that he has wriggled free of his clothes and escape!
As he escapes, Freak falls through a skylight into the laboratory of Curt Connors. Thinking it is his friend Raymond’s lab, Freak steals some syringes full of something called BHK Stem Cell project…
Back at FEAST, Vin and Alan question Aunt May about the theft and she and Peter identify Freak as the thief.
That night, Freak is in agony and curses Spider-Man! Suddenly he vomits, spewing a red and pink acidic mass which takes shape, forms in front of him and engulfs him in a cocoon!
At The King Class Club, Peter, Harry and Carlie arrive to meet Lily and all sign her petition to convince her father to run for mayor. Peter pledges money he simply doesn’t have but Carlie saves him and crosses his name off.
In the morning, a worker discovers the cocoon as Curt Connors discovers his trashed lab. Vin and Alan soon arrive to guard the cocoon as Carlie runs some tests…
Meanwhile, at The Bar With No Name, the owner, The Bookie, is taking bets on what or who the cocoon is. The super-villains that frequent the bar all take some of the action.
At home, Peter does his laundry, sews up his costume and catches the news where he learns of the cocoon and a photo opportunity (any excuse to get out of doing laundry)!
A short subway ride and a change into costume later and he times it perfectly! As the cocoon bursts open, his camera runs out of battery and misses the birth of a skinless, bone-protruding human monster that issues a horrific scream…!
Highlight
The grotesque birth of Freak!
Comments
When it comes around to writing really good reviews there is an element of passion involved. You have to have passion for the story and from the story. Unfortunately, in Amazing Spider-Man #552, there is none of that.
Even when the original line-up for Brand New Day was announced, this was the arc I was looking forward to least. I thought the preview pages looked dated, had never read any of Gale’s work to get excited about what he was going to offer and thought that Freak was the most obvious new villain out of the lot. I was right.
The birth of Freak is a stunning visual sequence but entirely expected, Jimenez’s Spider-Man suffers from a consistency problem, goes from being flexible and springy to chunky and static in between panels and, on the whole, I find myself not overly interested in where this is going, nor that Spider-Man has to wash and sew his costume (been done before and better).
One redeeming factor is that Freak is an unintelligent villain, unable to outsmart and plan but simply react, which sets him away from Mr. Negative and Menace.
Asides from the plot there are fundamentals wrong with the storytelling: the transition between scenes is rushed and often missing, the characters are fleshed out but with too much dialogue, pages look busy, there is little room for variation in panel size or artistic impact and the time scale needs to be clearer as here is massive jumps in time between relatively small panels. Gale needs to refine these things in order to create a tighter and streamlined story.
And other things that just jar – Spidey failing to web up Freak during the chase, Freak escaping the webbing, Freak landing in the lab and luckily presuming that it is his friends, the shallow representation of the supporting cast (I don’t learn anything new about any of them) and the series of unfortunate events at the end which rely upon the amazing visual of Freak’s birth (stunning, Mr Jimenez!) to impact on the reader at all.
Apart from the art, which still needs a little more depth, definition and variation in presentation and that Gale manages to include a lot of supporting cast, there’s not much to rave about.
Rating
Cover –  
Overall –
Reviewed by Adam Rivett
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