I'm going to abandon my no-spoilers policy because I want to talk about this book in a little more depth, so if you haven't read the issue yet, move on please. Otherwise, join us down a bit.
Amazing Spider-Man #638: So here it is, after the conclusion of "The Grim Hunt" last week, Joe Quesada, Marvel's Editor-in-Chief steps in to walk us through the fallout of the "One More Day" storyline, and reveal what happened to save Aunt May's life and establish the Brand New Day status quo. Picking up the threads from a two year old story, "One Moment in Time" is going to be a lot of things to a lot of different people. For the haters who have been hating on ASM since 2008, in their eyes, this is probably going to justify their hate. For those who joined the book recently, there is going to be a lot of confusion and for those who are willing to see it through to the end, hopefully there will be satisfying answers.
Personally, I think I fall into the latter category even though I am a total Mary-Jane fanboy. I caught the Spidey bug with Maximum Carnage, at age 7, so it took me years to truly understand who Gwen Stacy was, and why it was so important that she showed up during the Clone Saga. Because of that, I've never been a fan and Mary-Jane has always been my gal, so while I, like so many other people, were super critical of dissolving the marriage, I can't deny that the ends have certainly justified the means. Let's break the issue down a bit:
While we knew that the secret of Mary Jane's whisper was going to be a reveal, I, like I think a lot of people, were caught off guard by how minor it turned out to be. A number of theories I've read believed that Mary Jane was the architect of everything and so far that doesn't appear to be the case. There is still more to be revealed so the potential is there, but we'll have to wait and see.
I was also very surprised to see a lot of Quesada art haters come out of the woodwork for his framing pieces. I'm not a huge fan of the first Mary-Jane page, but everything else was at least decent, although the people who've written pages about Joe Q being obsessed with Peter to the point of drawing him to look like himself are just off the rails.
If there is one group of people I want to hear from when this is over, it will be those who suggested that this should have been released as a remixed version of the Wedding Annual issue, which is essentially what they've done here. I wasn't shocked that they cannibalized it but was actually anticipating Rivera simply re-drawing a lot of the issue, rather than them actually replicating pages of the comic.
That said, Rivera's art really is gorgeous here isn't it? It is like the perfect blend of modern and classic and does a fantastic job of supplementing the annual pages, capturing the Silver Age feel while bringing quality storytelling to the additional parts. He colors his own work and his mastery shows, this is probably the biggest project he has had to date and I hope it lands him something huge in the future.
So through one issue, the whisper is revealed and the wedding failed to happen because Mephesto as a bird managed enact some Butterfly Effect, releasing a criminal and allowing the resulting actions to lead to Peter being knocked unconscious and missing the wedding. It is definitely going to be interesting to see where things go from here, as this first issue ends in unison with the annual. Everything after this is off the map so to speak, which means full time Rivera but everything written is from Quesada.
Overall, a solid issue. I do think that this is going to be a story that relies more on the whole than the sum of the parts however. If I had to rate this issue on its own, I would probably give it a B-, but I'll give it to the conclusion.
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