Review — ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ #38 Is A Little Gross And A Lot Of Fun

The events of Dark Web continue to haunt Spider-Man. In Amazing Spider-Man #38, that does spell trouble for Peter Parker, but it’s a lot of fun for us.

Zeb Wells, Ed McGuinness, Emilio Laiso, Mark Farmer, Wade Von Grawbadger, Marcio Menyz, Erick Arcinega, and Joe Caramagna take a minute to let our hero face the horrors of Limbo- literally!

Peter Parker and his demonic counterpart Rek-Rap have been captured by Re-Po, Limbo’s repo man (I mean, it’s right there on the box). Unfortunately, the demon still has desires from his mortal life, and apparently one of them is murder. Can Parker and Rek-Rap fight through Re-Po’s hellish pocket dimension before one of Peter’s closest friends pays the price?

I honestly think the Spider-Man side of Peter Parker’s life is a lot better when it’s moments of silly insanity punctuated by darkness. It seems that Wells has a very similar idea, as he wraps up this very silly story before transitioning to the winter crossover Gang War. And that’s really what it is. Peter teams up with his ultimate fanboy. The villain is revealed to be a minor antagonist from earlier in the series. Then there’s an extended prologue to Gang War that reveals a mystery villain (who’s probably exactly who you think it is).

And that’s okay for this to be so slight. McGuinness has the comedy chops to make this an enjoyable as hell story. Together, Wells and McGuinness execute a clever concept- time is passing faster within Re-Po’s pocket dimension, so Peter and Rek-Rep have a week to stop Re-Po from killing Randy Robertson in about a minute of real time. It’s paced just right (and lettered so well by Caramagna) and laid out so we feel both passages of time.

Menyz continues to show his talent as a color artist. He uses colors that fit McGuinness’s cartoony style, which recalls more flat colors. Then he adds layers that makes the art feel three dimensional, and seemingly has real life light sources. It all adds together to make the issue look great throughout.

The epilogue drawn by Laiso and Arcinega is interesting. It kind of shows a little bit that the Gang War hasn’t been threaded through enough of the issues that came before frankly. It is pretty well executed though- we see glimpses of each major player in New York’s super-underworld. There’s hints at some of the larger emotional story threads next to the big plot beats. Then there’s a twist villain, which if you’ve been paying attention to the series, you can probably guess who it is.

Amazing Spider-Man #38 is available now from Marvel Comics.