Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Amazing Spider-Man – Back to Basics | Comics

Spider-Man goes back to basics with rekindled love with Mary Jane, a new roommate and a dangerous new villain!

After his latest victory over Norman Osborn as the Amazing Spider-Man, Peter Parker is trying to get back at his feet and what better way to do that other than hanging out with Mary Jane Watson, the love of his life? However, he finds him awake at 5 AM at the sound of his roommate playing Call of Duty: Latveria with all those speakers on.

The person, Fred Myers is also a known super-villain Boomerang, other than being his roomie who just moved in alongside his friend Randy Robertson. Lately, he robbed a museum and former Kingpin turned current mayor of New York, Wilson Fisk allowed him to escape. This made Spidey suspicious but he can now keep an eye on Fred from home.

The next thing he knows is Avengers, Defenders and X-Men are trying to fend the city from an alien invasion. Spider-Man jumps right in to help fight this army of insectoids and he sees Human Torch falling victim to one of those. Soon, he sees all of the assembled heroes were having their face swallowed up by those creatures except him.

He noticed a pattern in the portal that the biomasses were coming from and to see if he is right, Spidey leaps towards it, only to hit by a glass bubble. He sees master of illusions, Mysterio standing on the other side and quickly bursts in to subdue him.

The judge gets bored with Mysterio monologuing at his hearing and then Janice Lincoln, daughter of mobster Tombstone and former Beetle of the imposter Sinister Six team shows up to defend his case but before doing that, she starts puking bugs. The entire courtroom is swarmed with hordes vermin and everything around them starts collapsing.

amazing spider man back to basics marvel comics nick spencer
Amazing Spider-Man – Back to Basics | Comics

This looks a lot like those schemes Quentin Beck would put out and he seeks an exit while everyone else is seemingly being massacred but he instead finds himself surrounded in dark with an entity that has a history with him and sent Beck after the wall-crawler. Wrapped around in a huge centipede, this new foe heralds doom for the hero.

Peter thought he saw enough weirdness for then but didn't expect a sudden encounter with Fisk only a week ago. Even though very strict to all other vigilantes, Wilson seem to publicly accept him to separate him from his peers. Then he is accused of plagiarizing his doctoral degree and his entire academic credentials got literally trashed.

This fiasco has made him lose the job at Daily Bugle and in spite of him not being guilty; he couldn't come clean about it without revealing his secret identity and the time when Otto Octavius took control over his body. Though Mary Jane laughs it off for the ridiculousness of the whole thing but unfortunately, Aunt May didn't took it very well.

Tired of making the same mistakes again and again, Peter decides to turn his whole life around by going back to MJ and resume his relation with her. Things did started falling in line as Empire State University calls him in to give him a second chance to re-submit his doctoral thesis on recommendation of faculty member Dr. Curt Connors AKA The Lizard.

Though Parker is freaked out to see Connors in his reptilian persona, he assures that there is an inhibitor chip on his neck to make sure that he doesn't hurt anyone. He is also working on reverse engineering an Isotope Genome Accelerator to separate his two personalities. At that very moment, Black Ant and Taskmaster broke in to steal it.

Since he cannot stop them without blowing his cover, Peter causes a chemical explosion and Spider-Man arrives to rescue. Before leaving, he recognizes and greets Parker among the crowd. All of a sudden Peter and Spidey became two different persons moving ahead with their own lives, one with Mary Jane and other with crime-fighting.

So, when the Tri-Sentinel shows up next time wrecking the city MJ and Pete goes to a bowling alley, while everyone's friendly neighborhood wall-crawler goes to fight the murder-bot of mutants! One of them however become powerless, another one has thrown responsibility out of the window but how does Kraven the Hunter got mixed into this?

tri sentinel spider man marvel comics peter parker ryan ottley
Genocidal Tri-Sentinel Returns

Here is your links to buy "Amazing Spider-Man – Back to Basics" from Marvel Comics in issues on Amazon.

Amazing Spider-Man V5 01

Amazing Spider-Man V5 02

Amazing Spider-Man V5 03

Amazing Spider-Man V5 04

Amazing Spider-Man V5 05

Here is your link to buy "Amazing Spider-Man – Back to Basics" from Marvel Comics on Amazon.

Amazing Spider-Man – Back to Basics

To shake things up from the core and getting a fresh new start, Marvel Comics hired a brand-new creative team of writer Nick Spencer (Ant-Man – Second-Chance Man, Doctor Strange – Damnation) and artist Ryan Ottley (Haunt, Invincible) in 2018 for "Back to Basics" storyline for the newest monthly ongoing volume of Amazing Spider-Man.

Collecting the first five issues of the series, Nick actually did a pretty impressive beginning as he laid foundation for upcoming arcs yet to come and Ryan was at his absolute peak as well. Going back to the roots, they bring back some of the old villains who, although are not Carnage or Goblin-level scary but troublesome enough, to get back at Spidey.

peter parker vs. spider man marvel comics
Peter Parker Vs. Spider-Man!

Aside from the regular folks in the life of the hero, Black Cat, Black Panther, Black Widow, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Daredevil, Doctor Strange, Gambit, Groot, Hawkeye, Human Torch, Iron Fist, Iron Man, Jean Grey, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Old Man Logan, Rocket Raccoon, Rogue, She-Hulk, Star-Lord, Thing, Thor and Vision made a cameo.

Overall, "Back to Basics" really went back to the deep roots of Amazing Spider-Man legacy and nitpicking details to deliver another "Brand New Day" for the hero. The inclusion of penciller Humberto Ramos (Champions – Change The World, Extraordinary X-Men – X-Haven) for a bonus back-up story was also a treat for long-time fans.
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