| The Amazing Spider-man #82 Written by: Saladin Ahmed Artwork by: Jorge Fornés |
| Published by Marvel comics Released – 22/12/21 |
Spider-Man gets spooky in this oddball issue of the Amazing Spider-Man as writer Saladin Ahmed teams up with eerie artist Jorge Fornés to create a one off, special issue!
In previous ‘Beyond’ issues, Peter Parker has been slowly recovering from radiation poisoning and at this point in the beyond storyline, he’s in a very weakened state and can barely remain conscious for 5 minutes. After being moved out of the ICU , Peter meets a guy in the same ward, after talking to him for only a few moments, a doctor comes and wheels him Away, Fornés manages to use his art create an off-putting tone for the issue by obscuring the doctor and he is helped by the colourist Dan Brown, choosing to use a colder colour pallet in the room.
Being wheeled away, the patient cheerfully says goodbye to Pete as MJ enters the room to visit. Midway through the conversation, the mysterious Doctor, whose face is still hidden tells the wife of the other patient that he was never registered to the hospital, which is evidence enough this Doc is one bad dude. Another nice bit of attention to detail is that the panels showing the outside of the ward displays mostly warm colours, just a nice touch to emphasise the dark, cold feeling of the room. Pete notices the doctors lies but before he can say anything, he falls asleep.
Finally, the doctor enters the page on full display, a grotesque looking man with blood red eyes, it’s such an exciting moment as you see the villain of the story emerge, looking just as you’d expect. Great stuff. The doctor clears MJ out if the room and takes another woman from the ward, unbeknownst to her, his intentions are far more sinister then he let’s on and as she’s wheeled away. Peter tries to stop him but he moves to fast, jolting into pain and fading into unconsciousness. Ahmed is surprisingly good at knowing how to build tension in readers through his storytelling like in a movie when the main character has solved the mystery but is helpless to do anything about it.
When Parker awakens, the doctor decides it’s time to take him away and wheels him through the hospital, taking him to the abandoned -2 level. These pages are riddled with gorgeously morbid images of subtly uncomfortable panels such as The use of shadows the doctor emits which show him to look even more disgusting then he himself does and the Dutch angle shots, symbolising a sense of uneasiness . Once the doctor reaches his destination, he gives some exposition to Peter and shows him a pile of bones (presumably from the other patients) before walking into the darkness to emerge as a giant demon monster thing! In its creepy glory, it prepares to star eating Spider-man as it tells him about its weakness (which is incredibly stupid, I mean c’mon man he’s Spider-man you should know that’s a bad idea even if you don’t know he’s Spider-man). He says that light causes him pain which helps out MJ a lot, who was spying on the pair and flashes the monster with her phone, temporarily stunning it!
Leading him into a room of lights, she manages to set the creature on fire and burn it to a crisp in a particularly horror movie fashion. I just have to mention the colours once again, they make this scene so much more energetic from the moody blues of the abandon corridors to the blinding light of the fire, it’s probably one of the best colour jobs marvel have put out in a while. And sticking to the horror movie tropes, the two treat the whole fiasco like its no big deal and move on.
After that, we get a little epilogue with Misty Knight and Coleen Wing in the sewers, stumbling upon the lizard. This weird little spinoff in the beyond saga is the only part I don’t really understand. I mean, why are they there? I’ve tried to find other books they’re in to try and piece together their involvement but this is it. They just show up in random spots with no explanation. Weird, right?
Overall, this book is a special one, it was a really great one off read with great atmospheric writing, art and colour similar to stylish horror movie from the 70’s. This issue really impressed me and I hope we can get more off shoot stories like this in Spidey’s future. Next time, we stay with Peter in an issue Marvel says contains “on of the biggest moments in Spider-man history!”, Be here!
10/10 (wow!)
Reviewed by Leo Brocklehurst on 11/1/22