One of the (many) great things about J. Michael Straczynski’s run on Amazing Spider-Man was his willingness to embrace the “event changes” of Civil War and then take further risks with it. Peter Parker’s identity is now public, so this story arc explores why secret identities are so important.
Kingpin hires an assassin to kill Peter, but the sniper shoots Aunt May instead. While MJ attends to May in the hospital, Peter, maskless, tracks down the killer.
We see him becoming increasingly savage—wearing his humorless black costume, breaking the bones of various criminals, and even webbing up law enforcement with the police get in his way.
Meanwhile, Kingpin, in prison, is openly gloating to the corrupt guards in his pocket. He quotes Medea: “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”
We’ve certainly seen this kind of sadistic, “win at all costs” behavior from Fisk in the pages of Daredevil—but he’s never been this way towards Spider-Man, largely because he didn’t know his true identity.
The hunt is excellent, highly recommended reading, but to sum up: Peter figures out that Kingpin is behind it. Peter travels to the hospital and donates blood to May, hoping his radioactivity will cure her.
He then goes to the prison to confront the Kingpin.
Meanwhile, Fisk has paid the guards a million dollars to give him his white suit back and let him out of his cell…
So we have the hero in black, the villain in white, and a showdown.
Peter takes off his costume and gives Fisk a true beat down.
During it, he reminds Kingpin that he has super strength and other spider-abilities, while Fisk is just a man. Remember that Kingpin debuted in Spider-Man. He became more associated with Daredevil, who doesn’t have enhanced strength, where his ability to go mano-a-mano with the titular hero made more sense. I appreciate JMS calling out that in a real fight, Spider-Man should wipe the floor with Fisk.
Then, Peter goes dark and makes a death threat.
He ends the fight by saying that if May dies, he will come back and kill him.
Despite this, assassins still come for her in the hospital and Peter has to break multiple laws to protect her.
The story ends with May still catatonic and Peter realizing that he has pushed himself beyond his own moral code.
The Amazing Spider-Man issues tell the main story above, while the two companion monthlies told related stories.
Honestly, it’s more than a little distracting to have Spider-Man concurrently having other adventures while the AmSpM story is going on because JMS’s script is so intense and intentional. It’s not that the other stories are bad, they just break the momentum. I’ve covered them elsewhere, but they all have the “Back in Black” tag so you can find them by clicking it below (after I write and publish them, of course).
English (US) · 