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Amazing Spider-Man #572
New Ways To Die Part 5 – Easy Targets
Credits
Writer: Dan Slott
Pencils: John Romita Jr.
Inks: Klaus Janson
Colors: Dean White
Letters: VC’s Cory Petit
Asst. Editor: Tom Brennan
Editor: Stephen Wacker
Executive Editor: Tom Brevoort
Editor-In-Chief: Joe Quesada
Publisher: Dan Buckley
Spidey’s Braintrust: Gale, Guggenheim, Slott & Wells
Synopsis
Peter helps Aunt May clean up the wreckage at FEAST and overhears Ben Urich and Betty Brant interviewing the sweatshop workers who claim they have all been to Oscorp. Betty reports this to Dexter Bennett but is told to leave the story but Peter heads off to question Harry.
At Osborn Manor, Norman directs Bullseye and his team (infiltrated by Anti-Venom) to go after Spider-Man using the tracer in his chest. As they leave, Anti-Venom takes Peter’s camera back.
At Oscorp, Radioactive Man and Songbird join Norman and Venom in order to try to cure Venom of Anti-Venom’s attack. Norman extracts some of the antibodies killing Venom and takes it to the one person who can counter anything designed to kill… Freak! The indestructible Freak is hooked up to numerous tubes and it is revealed that Oscorp has been using him against his will to produce cures which has stopped his addiction. Norman injects him with the anti-venom and he produces a venom more powerful than any before. Norman takes it into a secret lab (where he notices that someone has been in without his permission) and starts making a device to administer it…
Peter meets with Harry and Lily in The Coffee Bean. He tries to find out some information from Harry but Norman calls and interrupts, telling Harry that he’s a failure and to stop messing with his things. Lily has a tender moment with Peter while Harry talks but suddenly Peter’s spider-sense goes off. Atop the opposite roof, Bullseye checks in with Norman saying that they’ve traced Spidey to The Coffee Bean. The hit team fire smoke canisters into the shop and Peter leads his friends to safety before donning his Spidey costume. The team enters the building but are attacked by Anti-Venom who reveals himself. Spidey appears through the smoke and they fire at him! Spidey thinks he’s avoided the bullets but they swerve to hit him! Bullseye adds to the injuries by slicing him with shards of glass!
Outside, Harry thinks his dad tried to kill them so storms off to Oscorp!
Spidey hides from Bullseye so that he can recover. He tries to throw a spider-tracer on him but Bullseye catches it and throws it back at him, burying it in his neck! Anti-Venom, who has taken out some of the squad, comes to help Spidey. He returns his camera and Spidey realises how the squad is tracking him. Seconds later he steps out to face Bullseye and throws a webbed up package at him. It sticks to him but and, just as he realises it is Spidey’s tracking unit from his costume, the squad fires and puts Bullseye down! Anti-Venom deals with the rest of the squad and then tells Spidey where Osborn is…
Norman joins Radioactive Man, Songbird and Venom dressed in his Green Goblin suit! He injects Venom with the venom from Freak and, as it reverses the effects of Anti-Venom, gives him a gift; a way of protecting the symbiote as it heals and of administering the rest of the venom. Venom puts the gift on and emerges as… the Brand New Scorpion!
Highlight
Spider-Man vs. Bullseye!
Comments
I love the new role for Eddie Brock. Whilst it’s not the highlight of the issue there are elements here that show Dan Slott’s progression of the character to be right and worthy of attention.
The highlight is Spidey taking on a villain he’s only been against once before. The short Spidey vs. Bullseye sequence is not going to go down in the history books as an epic but it is as it should be – short, sharp, accurate and brutal. Slott takes the core of Bullseye’s character and transfers it to this scene with no messing or trickery. Slicing Spidey with glass, thudding a spider-tracer into his neck and peppering him with bullets (all shown with pace and precision by some clean pencils from John Romita Jr.) really takes Spidey down a physical peg and puts Bullseye up a psychological one. Spidey gets his butt handed to him which is always a good thing to see as it brings the best of the character out and humanises him greatly.
Other nice moments that show how well Slott orchestrates a story and a large supporting cast are the inclusion of Freak, Harry’s reaction to the Thunderbolts attack, an interesting moment between Peter and Lily, Green Goblin’s reappearance and Songbird and Radioactive Man’s reaction to this, the cracking scene with Norman in the workshop and final page which hark back to when Gargan first became Venom (see Mark Millar’s Marvel Knights Spider-Man #1-12) and Gargan’s reliance on having the symbiote harks to the major issues he’s been having in Thunderbolts.
I find myself suffering the same problem with the art again this issue – inconsistency. All is well (in fact more than well – stunning, beautiful and full of quality pages that make me realise Romita Jr. needs to never leave Spider-Man again!) up until the final four pages where suddenly everything is blocky, choppy, the colours are flat and the detail and impact is gone. It simply looks rushed and takes a massive amount of impact away from the fact that The Green Freaking Goblin is back in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man for the first time in years! He doesn’t look like a villain, he doesn’t look like the manipulator… he looks daft.
This issue crescendos; each scene becoming more and more important in getting the reader sucked in and all of the players into play for a grand finale. Again it is Slott’s balancing which gets this to work but he’s set himself up to produce a resounding and powerful conclusion next issue! Here’s hoping he can pull it off and give us the payout of information and teases we’ve earned!
Rating
Cover –  
Overall –
Reviewed by Adam Rivett
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Ultimate Spider-Man