Review: ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ #44 Calls A Cease Fire

Marvel’s Gang War event has devastated the publisher’s urban heroes. In Amazing Spider-Man #44 it all comes to a violent end. At the end, is it better or worse for everyone?

Zeb Wells, John Romita Jr., Scott Hanna, Marcio Menyz, and Joe Caramagna negotiate the ceasefire.

Madame Masque has seized half the city. Tombstone the other half. The only hope New York City has now is Spider-Man and his team of Avengers. They’re about to fight the battle of their lives for the soul of New York, but they may have already lost.

The majority of this issue is just a fight. It’s a well written one with some solid character beats, which elevates it over other beat-em-ups, but it’s still largely just a fight. Wells does pack in character development in the dual epilogues, giving Peter some hope and revealing the true winner of the war. The end of the issue — using a data page showing the final map of gang territories that had been used all through the crossover — was as effective as splash page to end the issue, and was a great use to the storytelling tool by Wells and Caramagna.

Romita and Hanna continue to put out some of their best recent work here. The action is clear and dynamic. The superhumans move in impossible ways that make sense for the rules given to them, and the regular humans feel like paper dolls in comparison. Though the faces are a little weird (a hallmark of late Romita), they also make the emotional moments land really well too. Menyz’s colors continue to be strong through the series- he makes the action even clearer and easy to follow by setting it all at mid-day.

Amazing Spider-Man #44 is available now from Marvel Comics.