Amazing Spider-Man #590

"And the start of a story that's going to effect almost every title at Marvel Comics!"

 There are way too many typos in these blurbs every month. Marvel needs to hire a copy editor. Or a better one.  

Amazin' Spidey and the FF? It's like I'm a giddy eight year old all over again.

God I love the Osborns

@Garrett  I know right, this book is so much fun

I hate Mr. Negetive (but i love where the character seems to be going). But i love the osborns. This should be good.

Can't wait for this. It's great to see some of the things happening in Spider-Man affecting the Marvel Universe proper. Also, Fantastic Four!

Gosh, I need to catch up on Spidey...

@tittom dude...do it. you don't know what you're missing.

yeah, so I'm told..

It has been great. I'm only 6 months into comics, and i got caught up from BND. I don't have a ton of comics knowledge, but i'm loving ASM.

We need a SPOT ongoing!!!

I never read the JMS run.  is the consensus that the BND writing team is doing a better story or at least on par?

@cutty - the JMS run was brilliant (yeah, whatever...) and really grew Spider-Man into a rounded interesting character. When he reveiled his identity in Civil War it was the perfect thing for the character to do and signalled a new and exiting chapter in the Spider-man saga. However, Joe Quesada bottled it and with OND/BND chopped JMS's story at it's knees and regressed the character 20 years. There are many brilliant stories of Peter Parker hiding his costume from Aunt May and dating groovy chicks - they were by Stan Lee and John Rotima in the 60's.

@cutty: JMS' run was half great and half blood-curdlingly awful.  BND, on the whole, has been much better.

JMS run was excellent.  The best run on ASM since Stan Lee.

BND is also great.  Though it hasn't blown me away like JMS did.  But Guggenheim, Waid, and Kelly have done excellent short stories here.

Millar's 12 issues of Marvel Knights are also excellent.

I'm predicting this as my POW, though Iron Man Secret Warriors look strong too.

@Conor yeah i loved JMS except for the whole thing with gwen and the kids. His spider-man was very interesting but not very fun, this BND stuff has been both.

@Roi - are you talking about the norman osborn knocked her up storyline?  i've heard about that, sounds pretty horrifying

@Cutty It was the only time during the JMS run that i considered dropping amazing. impressive since i can't actually imagine a world where i don't reading Amazing every month

JMS was kind of like casting Clooney as Batman. His Peter Parker was pitch-perfect, but his Super Hero stuff (Spidey quips aside) was usually insane, and rarely respected the universe, except when he'd bring in reverential characters like Cap or T'Challa. 

The web-heads and Bendis need to have a working lunch and hash out what Peter's attitude about sharing his secret identity actually is.

Two issue arc? Nice

@jimski Agreed but they can get out of it easily by saying this story takes place before Avengers 51 and maybe what happens in this story makes him lighten up on his secret identity

What a great issue. I was 'iffy' at the start, but man, i felt like it did a great job at covering alot of ground within the 20 pages or so.

This week's Spider-Man: Peter reveals his identity too Ghost Rider!

'I cant believe that your you!'-Johnny

The one thing about JMS's ASM run that I hated was the whole Spider-Totem thing. Doesn't that kind of ruin the point of Spidey being an everyman? I thought the point of power and responsibility was that Peter took the powers he was given by chance and used them to right wrongs. When it was revealed that he was "chosen" by some spider-god because he was destined or whatever, it gets reversed to "With great responsibility, there will also come great power."

Everything else was great storytelling though.

I don't have a problem with "regressing the character 20 years". If Pete's gonna stick around for another 45 years, maybe an "exit point" for the character is the wrong thing.

Spider-Man's 600th issue is about revealing himself to the Great Lake's Avengers right?

This was a whole lot of fun. 

This was fun. Not the best Spider-Man issue in recent memory, but a pretty good issue, with an interesting story, featuring the Fantastic Four, and 2-parts long! A great 4-star book.

How does this book have a lower rating than Cable?!? INJUSTICE!!

Almost gave it a 2, but it picked up towards the last half as it began to tie more and more into the stuff going on in the last year.

@ActualButt I actually thought that the totemic angle just accentuated the power/responsibility angle even more. It was heavily implied that other totems, not just Ezekial, used their powers without considering how they could help others. The entire subtext of the final battle with Morlun is that Peter is not fighting for himself, he is fighting for all of the loved ones in his life, of which there are many. 

I haven't read all of the BND stuff but I was under the impression that Peter did not know what had happened to him. Obviouslly after this issue he does. So when did he find out about the Mephisto deal, or did he know the whole time?

I don't get the why people are making a big hububaloo about the identity reveal in this arc.  Just because the New Avengers know he's Peter Parker again now doesn't mean the rest of the world does again as well.  Spider-man has had close yet distinct relationships with the Avengers and the Fantastic Four.  Just because he pulls his mask off and reveals himself to one group isn't going to be the same as with a different one.  For one, he isn't a member of the FF and isn't having to decide whether or not he wants to continue to be a part of their group like with the New Avengers, and 2nd the FF are a very open and public super hero team and having them know his true identity could be alot more dangerous for his loved ones(the whole reasoning behind his deal in BND being to protect them), then the New Avengers who have been in hiding and on the 'wrong side of the law' since Civil War.  Having seperate reveals for each group seems to me to be the right choice storywise.