Hellgate arrives and talks like the LARPers from the Hawkeye TV show. Black Cat freaks out over Hellgate’s appearance, tries shooting him with UZIs, and runs away. Hermes arrives to warn everyone of the dangers of Hellgate. Jonah reads newspapers. A mysterious stranger drives a moped. All this plus … Spidey fights Hellgate???(1)
(Hey, the cover actually happens in this issue!)
CREDITS
Writer: Joe Kelly
Penciller: John Romita Jr.
Inker: Scott Hanna
Colorists: Marcio Menyz with Erick Arciniega
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagna
PREVIOUSLY IN AMAZING SPIDER-MAN …
Spidey is happy beating up bad guys and saving a senator. Peter Parker is impressing his new boss (despite his attendance record) who is eyeing him to take her place when she may eventually have to step aside. Tombstone gives Peter a heads-up about some trouble in the neighborhood. After confirming with Shay that they’re both seeing other people while dating each other, Spidey looks into Tombstone’s lead and ends up on a stakeout with the Black Cat. Roderick Kingsley’s men show up, but before Spidey and Black Cat step in, they are interrupted by Hellgate.
SUMMARY
Hellgate confronts Spidey and Black Cat, calling Spidey “the Prince of Steelsilk”. Since Spidey’s spider-sense doesn’t go off, he doesn’t see Hellgate as a threat and talks to him in “D&Deese” explaining that they’re busy dealing with Kingsley’s goons right now.
(Google couldn’t find anything about Nikodimu, the Away Lands, or Prince of Steelsilk.)
Hellgate doesn’t like being ignored and leaps down to the ground, causing an explosion which kills all of the goons, so that Spidey will have no reason not to “parley” with him now.
(“Oh, you won’t pay attention to me because of these other guys? Well, they’re all dead now. Can we talk now?”)
Spidey is angered that Hellgate killed all of them just to get his attention and attacks him.
(Hellgate is supposed to be superfast with this hit but we don’t see any superspeed in the rest of the issue.)
Meanwhile, Hermes (from the Hellgate backup story from issue #1) arrives at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. He has been trying to call the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and “Fred”(2). Suddenly a device of his registers that “someone” is here and he warns everyone to get back on the bus and off of the island.
(Hermes may turn out to be the hero of this story, but he’s a villain for talking loudly on his phone in public.)
Spidey continues to fight Hellgate, thrown off by how much heat he is producing, and realizing that he is upset – not that Spidey is hurting him, but that he is not hurting him enough.
Black Cat shoots Hellgate with some semi-automatic guns, telling Spidey to run, which he does, to lure Hellgate away to a less-crowded area.
(Does this seems like something Black Cat would do? Also, this reminded me of Rosario Dawson in Sin City.)
Meanwhile, J. Jonah Jameson is reading his morning newspapers when he notices a light in the sky which at first he thinks is the rising sun, but it is in the wrong side of town.
(While I enjoy seeing Jonah in this book, we literally cut away from the fight to watch him read the paper.)
Spidey is still running from Hellgate. He tries shooting two full web cartridges at him, which fully covers him in webbing, but he easily rips it off.
Meanwhile, an unknown person in an alley is monitoring police reports and hears about Spider-Man fighting an unknown assailant in Central Park. He takes off on his scooter.
(No idea who this person is, but he does have the same yellow markings as Hellgate, so there may be a connection. I will call him “Scooter”.)
In Central Park, Spidey throws three containers of liquid nitrogen (used to keep cool the network of telecom cables running beneath Manhattan’s streets)(3) at Hellgate. This freezes him solid, but only for a moment, as he frees himself, ready to continue their battle.
(“You didn’t really expect it to be that easy, did you?” “You know, for a moment, I did.”)
TO BE CONTINUED!
INITIAL RESPONSE
Remember near the end of the Zells run when we had an issue that was just one big fight with Tombstone and nothing else? This is kind of like that, but it’s not as bad. There are a few pages before the fight starts, and we get cutaways to three other characters, but basically the issue is mostly one big fight. Like I said in my review for that Zells issue (4), an issue that is just a fight is not a bad thing, if it’s done well and it’s interesting. This issue was done well enough to keep my interest (although that’s because of Spidey, not the villain).
WHAT I LIKED
I liked how Spidey did not immediately attack Hellgate when he first appeared. His spider-sense did not register him as a threat, so he realized how Hellgate was talking and responded in kind to try to defuse the situation.
(When in Rome, speak as the Romans do.)
For an issue that was mostly one fight, it’s a good fight. Hellgate is unknown to Spidey so he’s trying to figure out his skillset and how to fight him. He doesn’t just leap in and start swinging his fists.
I was always disappointed that after the 90s Clone Saga, Spidey did not incorporate any of Ben Reilly’s upgrades (stingers, impact webbing). So seeing him try out shooting entire web cartridges at an enemy as a “web bomb” is a nice touch. Good to see Spidey improving his equipment.
(Good idea, terrible name.)
Spidey was portrayed as smart, realizing that Hellgate is generating heat so he used liquid nitrogen to try to freeze him. Again, this shouldn’t be something that needs to be pointed out in a Spider-Man comic, but unfortunately it’s rare, so it’s worth pointing out when it happens.
The art is really good. I mean, it’s JRJR. If you like his art already, you’ll probably like it here.
WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE
Hellgate is just not that interesting. He thinks Spidey is “Prince of Steelsilk”, speaks as if he stepped out of a D&D campaign, wants to parley with Spidey, and is upset that he isn’t hitting him hard enough. That’s it. I understand this is his introduction as a character (notwithstanding the first issue’s backup) but we’ve had plenty of new villains be introduced in ASM where, in their first appearance, we understood who they are, why they are doing what they’re doing, and usually get us interested in them. Kelly has done of this with Hellgate. He’s just this heat-generating villain that we know nothing about that wants to talk to Spidey, and when he can’t that, he attacks him.
Also, Hellgate seems really out of place for a Spider-Man book. He really feels like he’s a villain that normally fights another superhero that Spidey has randomly run into.
(“Forsooth, verily, I beseech you! Gods wounds! Tally ho!”)
Black Cat is pretty useless in this issue. She seems immediately freaked out by Hellgate (for reasons that are never explained), seems traumatized by the deaths of Kingsley’s goons, doesn’t join in the fight except to shoot Hellgate with some guns (which seems out of character for her), and then she’s gone. Why was she introduced in the previous issue at all? We keep hearing that Kelly is a big fan of Spidey and Black Cat as a couple, but her appearance here feels like he was forced to include her in the previous issue and he got rid of her ASAP.
(I hope subsequent issues why Felicia is acting like this because it’s just weird.)
While I enjoy seeing Jonah here, literally all he does is read the newspapers and sees some light in the distance. That’s it. Feels like a waste.
(I refuse to believe that Spider-Boy disappearing would be worthy of a front-page story.)
Hermes feels like another one of Kelly’s characters that he introduces in the beginning of the arc, has them make subsequent appearances, and finally reveals that they were the whole point of the story (like the window washer in the 8 Deaths story). Although at this point Hermes just feels like he’s here as Basil Exposition to warn everyone about Hellgate and (hopefully) explain what’s going on with him.
It feels like in every other review I do, I remark that the writer must have just watched a movie or TV show because they make a blatant reference to it. I feel like Kelly just watched Scott Pilgrim (or read any of the graphic novels) because “Web-Bob-Omb” and “Frostbite-Bob-Omb” feels really forced here.
(SPVTW is such a great movie with such an unlikable protagonist. It’s the role Michael Cera was born to play!)
LETTERS PAGE SHENANIGANS
(Nic Lowe jokingly refers to “How do you do, fellow kids?” meme in his response. It does not as well as he thinks it does.)
WHAT THIS ISSUE MEANT OVERALL
This issue introduced Hellgate to Spidey and set him up as a physical threat that could not be easily defeated. Unfortunately we don’t know anything about Hellgate – who he is, what his motives are, why he’s here – so that doesn’t make him that interesting of a character. Maybe Hermes and “Scooter” will fill in the blanks.
GRADE
B-
For an issue that was mostly just a fight with a villain that seems out of place and is not that interesting (so far), this issue was not that bad. Unlike previous “all-fight” issues, there was other content to break up the action, and Spidey was portrayed as smart. Hopefully we’ll get more information about who Hellgate is and why he’s here (with Hermes likely saving the day).
NEXT TIME, IN AN ALL-NEW ISSUE OF AMAZING SPIDER-MAN …
More Hellgate! Spidey gets ahold of one of his axes! And is that dirt or blood on them?
FOOTNOTES
(1) Seriously, that’s basically all that Spidey does in this issue.
(2) According to Hermes, “Fred” is Captain Universe in this timeline. And the Marvel Wiki entry for this issue confirms this. I have no idea what this is talking about.
(3) According to Google: “While some advanced telecom cables, particularly superconducting cables, utilize liquid nitrogen for cooling, most standard telecom cables do not require it. Liquid nitrogen is used to maintain extremely low temperatures needed for the superconducting properties of these specialized cables. Regular telecom cables rely on standard cooling methods like air or water-based systems.”
(4) I think I wrote a review of that issue. (checks records) Wow, I’ve written 28 reviews on this website. That’s crazy.
English (US) · 