A Spider-Man Podcast

Amazing Spider-Man: Who Am I? #3 – REVIEW

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There’s a secret that’s recently been spreading across corners of the Marvel Universe: Spider-Man is stronger than he lets on.  That’s becoming a lot more apparent after the events of Amazing Spider-Man: Who Am I? #3, also known as the issue where Iron Man gets his rear handed to him by Spidey.

This issue picks up in the middle of Spidey’s 2nd heist since he’s lost his memory and turned to an apparent life of crime.  He may have knocked off a bank without a hitch, but breaking into Stark Industries is going to be a little harder, especially if Tony Stark has some questions he wants the Web-Head to answer.

photo 4Joshua Hale Fialkov gets to write a great battle scene in this issue that we may not see again for a while.  Spider-Man vs. Iron Man, and Spidey’s taken off the kid gloves.  Peter has lost his memory and is convinced by the writings of JJJ that he’s evil.  So there’s no reason for Spidey to play nice with Tony Stark.  What we learn in this issue is that when Spider-Man doesn’t hold back, he’s more than a handful for the Avengers’ founder.  Iron Man may not let loose his full arsenal on Spider-Man, but he only gets two decent hits in, and one was a cheap shot while Spidey had his back turned!

On the other hand, Spider-Man makes Stark look clumsy and ogreish.  Iron Man’s tech is no match for Peter’s speed, but it’s Spidey’s strength that really perplexes Tony here.  He makes more than one comment during the battle about Spidey’s unexpected strength.  This isn’t the first time that readers have learned that Spider-Man may be holding back during his fights.  Early in the Superior Spider-Man era Otto also comes to the realization that there’s more to Spidey’s strength than what he’s been revealing in battle.

This issue has some of Juan Bobillo’s best artwork yet of the series and doubles down on the action that made issue #1 such a success.  The elongated poses and perspectives of Bobillo’s Spider-Man really exaggerate the action for the positive.  He gives Spidey so much extension in his fight poses, that you can nearly feel the momentum.  Sometimes, his Iron Man looks a little too much like a Michael Bay Transformer, but otherwise Bobillo knocks this fight scene out of the park.

photo 1When it comes to the themes of identity and what makes Spidey a hero, there aren’t many answers in this issue.  At the start of this series, there was a lot of potential to explore whether an amnesiac Spider-Man would still have the same moral code, even if he was a crook.  But there’s not a lot of time to spend on these questions without it affecting the tone and pace of the issue.  The closest we come to this is when Spider-Man has the chance to land a death blow on Iron Man but doesn’t.  Why doesn’t he finish Stark?  The answer isn’t exactly clear in this scene.  Is it something in his moral code that prevents him, or is his amnesia just beginning to crack?  He had no problem pushing an innocent woman off a building earlier in the series (even if he did save her with a web line).

Peter quits the battle out of confusion.  I’d like to think that a line of dialogue could’ve been added to that scene (for instance “I’m a crook, not a killer”) that would’ve created an interesting character moment.  Even without the memories and lessons of Aunt May and Uncle Ben, that would have showed that there is something ‘good’ about Peter at his core, even when he is doing bad.

The production of this Infinite Digital series continues to be successful.  Mast & Geoffo return to the form that made the first issue so exciting.  However, since this issue featured the big battle scene between Spider-Man and Iron Man, I expected to see some effects that haven’t been used yet; something that would’ve taken it to the next level.  I didn’t feel this issue had that, but I am a relative new reader to the Infinite format.  I’m not sure how far you can push this format until it turns into animation.  Those lines will probably continue to be blurred as more creators experiment in this format.

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