Amazing Spider-Man #578-579 (2009)

Tribute cover!

People love paying tribute to the classic sequence from “if this be my destiny!” in Amazing Spider-Man #33. This story does it both on the cover and interior.

The subway Peter is on is attacked by Shocker, and he has to protect the civilians as well as his own identity.  With his costume under his tattered clothes, he has to heave collapsed tunnels and deal with the East River pouring in…He eventually succeeds due to a combination of brains, brawn, and raw determination.

And along the way, he rescues J. Jonah Jameson’s dad.

This is a very good claustrophobic rescue, and the kind of “small” story that made Amazing Spider-Man great in the Lee-Romita era.

Mark Waid and Marcos Martin will go on after this to make some wonderful comics–especially on Daredevil–and in these two issues we can see Martin’s artistic style developing.

He has very clear lines with crisp and static images, but still manages to convey movement and speed.  Honestly, many of his panels look like paintings.  It recalls John Romita Senior’s work on this title four decades earlier.