Amazing Spider-Man: The 8 Deaths of Spider-Man (Comics) | Review

Grief has a strange way of following a beaten hero and the latest arc catches Peter Parker mid-spiral, battling ghosts he cannot outrun, still worn down by years of loss, strained relationships and a life that simply refuses to slow down long enough for him to actually heal from anything.

Doctor Doom now sits as Sorcerer Supreme and rather than carry the annual burden of fighting Cyttorak himself, he hands over the task to Spider-Man, equipping him with a magical suit and eight extra lives to survive whatever comes next, no matter how steep the eventual toll grows.

Joe Kelly (Deadpool & Wolverine: WWIII, Superman: Emperor Joker) steps into Amazing Spider-Man as the driving writer behind this story, reshaping Peter into a reluctant champion forced to relentlessly face his mortality again and again while carrying the weight of a title that promises exactly what it threatens from the opening page.

Ed McGuinness (Hulk: Red Hulk, Nova: Origin) handles art duties for most of this run, giving the enchanted suit a chunky, larger than life presence while keeping Peter's expressions grounded, so each hard-won resurrection lands with lasting effect instead of feeling repetitive or hollow.

Doom approaches Spidey with a proposal after a routine robbery and he refuses, still resentful over how Doom claimed the Sorcerer Supreme's title months earlier following Blood Hunt but a brutal loss against the demon Cyntros forces him to accept the covenant on Doom's own terms.

Already badly outmatched, Spider-Man dies for the first time trying to punch through the black hole heart inside Cyntros, a foe built entirely out of unrestrained rage, while the astral form of Doctor Strange explains the grim stakes afterward. Peter must defeat every Scion of Cyttorak or the world itself will not survive the coming year.

Peter squares off against Cyperion just as Norman Osborn tells him Oscorp is shutting down for good after decades in business, quietly adding weight to an already grueling gauntlet and Peter later teams with Black Cat to steal a hidden book detailing Cyttorak's forgotten mystical history.

A demonic child later revealed as the Scion Cyrios drags Peter into his own past, forcing him to relive a bike lesson from Uncle Ben, an afternoon he thought he had buried away forever, then promises to walk him through each painful memory he holds before their last fight is finished.

Callix and his Crimson Canines take their turn inflicting damage on a Spider-Man running low on lives, while Callix's twin sister Cyra approaches him separately and offers a mysterious orb that seems to promise an escape from all of this dying. Their jaws rend through steel with terrifying ease, leaving Peter mauled and short on options.

Cyra's orb forces Peter to taste the deaths of everyone he has cared about all at once, sending him gasping and hollow inside, while the heartbreak is enough that after his next death he tells Doctor Strange he quits and walks away from the covenant despite what it costs everyone else.

Cradios goes on a full-blown rampage that pulls the X-Men into the clash, with Cyclops, Magik, Psylocke and Kid Omega engaging directly while Juggernaut almost instantly senses something deeply wrong with Cyttorak's energy from clear across the country before anyone explains why.

Callix, corrupted after secretly partnering with a force called the Blight, turns on his own family without warning and kills Cradios outright, showing no hesitation and decidedly little remorse, revealing a deep resentment toward Cyttorak that has plainly been building for years now, long before Spider-Man had ever entered this battle.

Callix sends his hounds after F.E.A.S.T., the shelter where Aunt May and Randy Robertson both work and Peter arrives to find the building full of bodies, the floor littered with shattered glass, finally spending his remaining lives to revive everyone before rejoining the larger battle outside.

Between deaths, Peter tries to explain his double life to Shay, his new girlfriend, who struggles to understand why loving Spider-Man means constant dread, secrecy and disappearing without warning at the worst possible times, even as the city burns, pushing their relationship toward a breaking point, leaving him wavering, torn apart.

Cyra pulls Peter into the swirling Crimson Cosmos to reach her father before Callix absorbs the remaining Scions but Callix diverts and breaks Peter's neck, with Death soon arriving as the plot ties toward Doom's new Sorcerer Supreme reign and the teased One World Under Doom event.

Sacrifice becomes the storyline's central theme as one Scion forfeits her immortality outright to bring Peter back one final time in a new form crafted to withstand the threat and by the closing pages, Callix is imprisoned while Peter finally reconciles with Shay. Her decision ultimately costs her everything she has ever loved or fought for.

Ed McGuinness anchors the visual identity of this arc with aggressive, expressive, thick linework that makes each Scion fight feel enormous, though his exaggerated style occasionally undercuts the quieter human scenes that this story leans on more than most typical Spider-Man books do.

Gleb Melnikov, Cafu and Andrea Broccardo step in across several key chapters and while every artist brings real skill to the page, the shifting visual tone between issues makes this stretch feel noticeably less consistent than any single artist run would have, creating jarring visual whiplash.

Joe Kelly structures the overarching mystery with clear momentum but the chapters written by Justina Ireland dig deepest into Peter's psychology, handling it with a surprisingly steady hand, giving the middle issues an especially introspective quality that slower paced readers will likely appreciate well over those action-focused ones.

Colorists Alex Sinclair and Marcio Menyz keep the Crimson Cosmos sequences obviously distinct from usual Earth set scenes, while letterer Joe Caramagna and editor Nick Lowe hold the whole rotating creative team together tightly, keeping everything from feeling disjointed on the page.

This event aims high with its clever central hook, giving Spider-Man eight lives to spend against legitimately intimidating mystical threats but the ambition occasionally outpaces the execution without ever fully losing its momentum, especially once the story leans perceptibly harder on X-Men politics than Peter's direct personal stakes.

Peter's emotional breakdown remains the clear standout, tracking a hero worn thin by loss who slowly rediscovers, piece by piece, what bearing responsibility actually means and that arc lands with real punch thanks to Cyra's psychological attacks and the F.E.A.S.T. sequence in particular.

Pacing drags in the middle chapters, where Cradios and a heavy X-Men sub-plot pull focus from Spider-Man inside his title for multiple issues in a row, lingering noticeably longer, leaving Peter feeling more like a background player than the actual champion this entire book is named after.

Readers chasing a big mystical Spider-Man event with high personal stakes will find plenty here worth their time, though anyone wanting a tighter, more Spider-Man centered read might walk away wishing this pact had cost fewer detours along the way. Still, the payoff by the final issue makes the long wait feel completely worthwhile.

Amazing Spider-Man: The 8 Deaths of Spider-Man is collected in a trade paperback edition that collects issue #61-70 in one volume. Physical trade paperback is available on comic-book shops, while digital version is also accessible across Amazon Kindle, ComiXology and Marvel Unlimited.