Amazing Spider-Man #668

Next up in the new comic pile, the latest installment of Amazing Spider-Man. The first two Spider-Island related issues of this series have been quite good, here's hoping we get more Jackal, and more Spider-Island goodness!

Amazing Spider-Man #668(Spider-Island tie-in):

Summary: Shang-Chi manages to convince New York's heroes(the FF, the Avengers, the Young Allies, etc) that the real Spider-Man had been attacked by the heroes during the massive Spider-Man attack last issue, which leads to Luke Cage telling Spidey to beat it, since he was just adding to the confusion. Bummed that he couldn't help his various friends and teammates battle the criminal Spideys, Spidey changes to his street clothes and decides to find his girlfriend, Carlie Cooper. While wandering around, Peter bumps into a reporter from the Daily Bugle(as well as Mary Jane), and decides that he was going to help out anyway, getting on the camera and revealing that he, like many New Yorkers, had “suddenly” acquired spider-powers, and that other law abiding New Yorkers with spider-powers should join him in helping take down the criminal Spideys. A bunch of New Yorkers listen to Peter's call and charge over to the criminal Spideys, helping the heroes defeat them. With the criminal Spideys taken care of and arrested, Mayor Jameson puts Manhattan under a quarantine and deputizes the heroes and citizens who helped defeat the criminal Spideys, telling them not to allow anybody to leave Manhattan, nor allow anybody to enter the island until they were able to cure the sinister spider-flu. From there, Carlie heads to her police station, while Peter heads to his job at Horizon Labs. Peter meets Reed Richards at the lab, who collects some blood from Peter, claiming he was collecting blood from as many infected New Yorkers as he could(so as to not cause anybody to suspect Peter was Spider-Man). Carlie has the Horizon send Peter over to her station house to go through the confiscated equipment of Spidey's enemies to see if he could rig anything up to help her with her battle against New York's criminals. While Peter is working, Carlie tells him that she thought she knew who was behind the Spider-related madness in New York, the Jackal. Peter immediately realizes that she was probably right, since the Jackal always had an obsession with Spidey's DNA. Meanwhile, Anti-Venom has entered the city to cure as many of the infected citizens as he could, seeing this as his new life's mission. At around the same time, Venom also enters the city... Back to Peter, he decides to tag along with Carlie as she checks out one of Jackal's last known hideouts. Peter and Carlie enter the warehouse and this issue ends with a trio of weirdos watching Peter and Carlie from the roof of the warehouse.

Thoughts: If I'm honest here, nothing really happened in this issue... From the first page to the last, there really wasn't anything that went down that I'd point at and say, “That was really important!” This was a solid comic and all, but it didn't really further the story... Plus there wasn't NEARLY enough Jackal here! That guy is awesome! He only appeared on one lousy page, and as usual, he stole the show with that one page! Bottom line, this was a very slightly above average comic for me, which is kind of a letdown since this series is usually WAY better than average. Here's hoping things pick up a bit come next issue.

Score: 7 1/2 out of 10.After his awesome "birds and the bees" talk, I think Jackal deserves his own series.