Amazing Spider-Man #669

And now we'll switch back to Marvel for a few issues starting with the latest issue of Amazing Spider-Man, part three of Spider-Island. That's about as much of an intro as I have...

Amazing Spider-Man #669:

Summary: This issue gets under way with Peter Parker(now able to flagrantly use his Spidey powers in public due to the whole Spider-Island thing) and his girlfriend Carlie(who also has spider-powers) battling Chance, White Rabbit and Scorcher(who, you guessed it, ALSO have spider-powers!). The three spider-powered baddies manage to get the initial advantage until Peter busts out some of his fancy Spidey fighting moves to rapidly put an end to the fight. Carlie notices Peter's surprising expertise in fighting like Spidey, and tells Peter to call Spider-Man into her police station so the three of them could talk about Jackal... Meanwhile, Venom is dealing with the Spider-King at his army base, the Avengers are trying to keep the people currently in Manhattan confined in the city so they couldn't spread the weird spider-plague, Mayor Jameson is told that he has the spider-plague(you can imagine how well he takes THAT news), and Anti-Venom is going around Manhattan curing people of their spider-powers. Back at Carlie's station house, Peter sneaks off and changes into his Spidey clothes to meet with her. When she asks where Peter was, Spidey tells her he had just swung off. Needless to say, Carlie isn't exactly buying this, but luckily for Spidey, he gets a call that the Shocker was robbing a bank. Spidey swings off to deal with Shocker, figuring he'd be able to avoid Carlie's pointed questions, but is followed by Carlie, who as a cop feels it's her responsibility to help. Upon arriving at the bank, Spidey is surprised to find Shocker walking around with four extra arms, and four extra eyes. Shocker begs Spidey to let him take the money, since the Mad Thinker had claimed he could cure Shocker of his spidery condition. While Spidey is trying to figure out what to do about Shocker, Carlie begins to mutate into a horrible spider-creature. This issue ends with Jackal bowing to the woman who was behind all of his recent experimentations, the Queen.

Thoughts: The Queen? Really? If that's who I think it is, that's a pretty obscure character who only appeared in like 6 issues of the old Spectacular Spider-Man series. Then again, I guess if you use a character with like NO prior appearances, you can do just about anything you want with them without having to worry about fan backlash. Looking past the Queen thing, this was a pretty enjoyable comic, as usual. Now, it wasn't great, but it did set up three pretty important plot points, the first is the Queen reveal, the second is Carlie becoming increasingly suspicious of Peter and the third is Jameson finding out that he had the spider-plague. So for me this felt more or less like a set-up issue. As the next few issues delve deeper into these plot points, I'm sure my score for this series will continue to climb.

Score: 8 out of 10.Poor, poor, poor Mayor Jameson...