Amazing Spider-Man: Shed

"Shed" as in sloughing off skin, not "small building to hold gardening tools". I ordered the Shed storyarc through my comic store, but Jack forgot to ship the issues to me. I think it's because after he sent me a couple of issues I didn't order in February, I contacted him and mentioned I wasn't buying every issue of Amazing Spider-Man, but I did want the Roger Stern/Lee Weeks Juggernaut issues. I didn't mention this story because either it hadn't been solicited yet, or I figured he had my order form, so it'd work out. Anyway, when I had a chance to swing by the store over the summer, there were copies on the shelves or in the Amazing Spider-Man back issues box, so I went ahead and picked it up. I never reviewed them, so here we are.

I wanted this story because the last time I bought comics written by Zeb Wells and drawn by Chris Bachalo, it was Amazing Spider-Man #555-557, where Spidey fights a Mayan Death God in the middle of a snowstorm. I enjoyed the story, thought Wells wrote a good Spider-Man, and felt the art was Good Bachalo, as opposed to Incomprehensible Bachalo, which is how I'd describe what I saw when I looked at some of his X-Men work a couple years earlier.

The story is that Curt Conners is under a lot of pressure. He's trying to keep the Lizard down, as usual, while maintaining his job at a pharmaceutical company, and trying to regain custody of his son, Billy. He knows with all his past problems, he's lucky to have a job, and he has to keep it for any shot of regaining custody of Billy. He also can't let there be even a hint the Lizard is lurking just beneath the surface, begging to be freed. Unfortunately, he has a boss who knows how important this job is, and so Mr. King keeps pushing Conners, demanding more progress, undercutting him in front of Curt's assistant, sleeping with Curt's assistant. King is fully confident his money and status will protect him, because antagonizing someone you know can turn into a giant lizard, and has eaten people in the past, is too stupid to explain otherwise.

So the Lizard takes over, and he's tired of Curt trying to keep him down. He decides to strike back, and with some outside assistance, succeeds in doing something that apparently destroyed Curt Conners forever. Conners being out of the picture apparently means the Lizard can use all of their brain now, and that makes him into something new. Sort of. His look changes a little, his powers are augmented a bit, and his goals have shifted some. None of them are necessarily huge changes on their own, but they add up to a somewhat different creature.

I still think Zeb Wells writes a good Spider-Man, and a good Peter Parker. His Spider-Man in this story is much more serious than in the snowstorm arc, but things are a little more personal for him here. Curt Conners is a friend, an occasional ally, and I'd imagine Peter sees a bit of himself in Billy. Peter's lost three parents (his mother and father, and Uncle Ben), he'd like to see Billy avoid losing his dad after his mother passed away from cancer. Which might explain why he struggles fighting the Lizard (beyond the Lizard being very powerful), he's more concerned with bringing back the man inside. Went on a tangent. Anyway, Wells writes a Spider-Man with a somewhat dorky sense of humor, who tends to ramble around the ladies, a little self-absorbed, but still very capable of being shaken by others' pain. This may not be strictly attributed to Wells, but I also like that Aunt May's love for her nephew enables her to overcome what Mr. Negative did to her, without Peter doing anything other than being in pain. You don't need a superhero to fix every problem. I do hope it didn't ruin her marriage. Also, his Black Cat has a mixture of playful and blunt that I highly approve of, even if she's burning Spidey with it.

I think this was Good Chris Bachalo again. I know his style isn't for everyone*, but I think he does some nice page design, his characters are decently expressive, even when they wear masks. His Lizard is suitably large and fearsome at first, and then kind of freaky after its metamorphosis. His Spider-Man is small, and his head seems oddly shaped, but something about the way Bachalo draws him suggests a coiled spring, full of energy. The coloring by Antonio Fabela helps, the reds in the background during moments of intense emotion (usually aggression) matching the red of the Lizard's eyes. Emma Rios handles some of the penciling duties in the later issues, and her styles a bit of a shift from Bachalo's. Thinner lines, more space in her panels. What I mean is I think Rios sets the view for the panels further away, so we aren't in so close to the characters, whereas Bachalo seems to zoom in close, where the Lizard, Spider-Man, Billy, are taking up more of a particular panel. It's a more crowded feeling, maybe designed to produce a strong reaction in the reader. We're looking this massive monster right in the eye, or we're right there next to Billy as he resigns himself to his fate. It makes us more a part of it, stimulates that lizard brain in us the Lizard kept going on about.

OK, there was one thing about the Lizard's change I wasn't terribly impressed by, his talking. When the Lizard starts talking to Spidey in #632, Spider-Man seems stunned by this, while I'm thinking, 'He used to talk all the time! He'd rant about how much he hated you and all mammals, and how he was going to make this a world for reptiles! The hard part was making him shut up!' I know the Lizard hasn't been much for chatter since about the time MacFarlane wrote and drew Torment**, but Lizard talking is not an unheard of event. I wasn't particularly high on his newfound ability to communicate with the lizard part of a human brain at first, either. It felt a bit like what Vermin could do, where being around him seemed to bring out the viciousness in people. But the Lizard's not so much making people angry as removing inhibitions, so it's not precisely the same thing. Besides, I haven't seen Vermin since Frank Tieri was writing Wolverine, he may be dead.

I'm unsure about the end of the story, where the Lizard runs because now that he has access to Conners' part of their brain, he udnerstands so much more, and it sort of freaks him out. Especially feeling shame for doing something considered perfectly natural in some parts of the animal kingdom. Back in that past when he was smart enough to talk, he once robbed a high-rise jewel store, simply to cast suspicion on Spider-Man, reasoning the web-slinger would come out to find the real culprit, and the Lizard could destroy him. So him just now realizing a plane is not just a big shiny bird, struck me as a bit strange. That's probably not fair of me. It really wouldn't be hard to argue that the Lizard's been in a mostly savage, purely instinctive mindset for so long it's forgotten all the things it knew when last it was smart. it does get the point across, that this is a different Lizard than a lot of people are used to. Even Spider-Man's forgotten what it's like to deal with a smart Lizard.

The other issue I have is, would suddenly having access to the mammal part of the brain necessarily make the Lizard regret its actions, and hightail it into the sewer? Spider-Man has plenty of enemies without such a strong reptile brain who do horrible things without a second thought. Maybe it happens because having access to these feelings and level of comprehension is new and overwhelming, like Commander Data when he installed the emotion chip. Or maybe it signifies Conners isn't entirely gone, leaving some future writer a backdoor if they want to bring Curt back. There were comments to the effect Conners was gone, leaving only the Lizard, heck, Conners' caption boxes disintegrated as he went away (nice piece of work by, would the caption boxes be Bachalo or letterer Joe Caramagna?). But people can pick themselves up and put themselves back together with time, so maybe someone will argue Conners just went deeply dormant, and will emerge when he can cope with what happened. Could wind up with this intelligent Lizard taking concoctions to keep Conners down, rather than the other way around.

This story was part of The Gauntlet, which seemed to be an excuse to trot out most of Spidey's old foes and give them an upgrade, a refocusing, or replace them with a newer model. The whole thing was supposedly being engineered by Kraven's family to wear Spider-Man down for some purpose, I assume to do with their plans to bring Kraven back from the dead***. The recap pages keep telling us Spider-Man is losing steam, but I don't really believe it. Yes, he's been getting beaten up every time you turn around. Mr. Negative knocked him through 3 buildings, Morbius' old girlfriend did a number on him, he was caught between the Juggernaut and a guy with the Captain Universe powers, even Mysterio got some shots in. But in the fight, I didn't see indications he was struggling because he was worn down and beat up. First he didn't want to hurt the Lizard too much, because he was trying to get through to Conners, and the Lizard's a tough foe anyway. Then he was unprepared for the Lizard's new abilities. Then a Lizard-controlled crowd did a number on him because he wouldn't fight back, for fear of hurting them. Maybe some internal narration would have helped. They did that a lot during Knightfall, Batman thinking about how slow and worn down he felt, how he had to be sneakier, more clever to get by, because his strength was waning.

I suppose they could mean emotionally he's losing the will to fight. He was a bit of a wreck at the end of the story, which is why he ends up at Aunt May's even though she's been horrible to him. However, he seemed plenty determined to stop the Lizard prior to that, so I think the will was still there. Maybe all that's a side effect of the rotating writers, there not being enough connecting tissue between arcs. Roger Stern made it seem like Peter was making the most of that one last shot Carlie gave him, but Wells (whose arc immediately followed Stern's) gave me the impression she was still peeved at him. The Kravinoffs were using Madame Web's visions to help them decide how to make situations worse for Spider-Man, but this arc didn't explain why she'd help them. I think they were torturing the third Spider-Woman, Mattie Franklin, and she helped them to stop that, but I'm not certain. I'm also not sure if they gain anything from having the Lizard in this new form other than it put the screws to Spidey just a little bit more.

Taken as part of an ongoing thread leading into a big event, I don't think Shed does very well. Taken on its own, I thought it was a pretty good story. Nothing fantastic, but enjoyable.

* With that snowstorm story, I recall one person using Bachalo's work as an example of the "mangaization" of American comics, which he considered the worst trend in comics art. I would counter that the worst trend is folks who crib their work from magazines and celebrity photos, providing lifeless art, but different strokes, I suppose.

** I do recall him talking in at least one comic after that, Amazing 365, but mostly I think he grew more savage and stupid. I was not a fan of that development.

*** I didn't read Grim Hunt, which dealt with all that, but if I understand it, they brought Kraven back, he wasn't happy to be back, but rather than kill himself again, he ran off to the Savage Land to do something. Collect his thoughts, perhaps. What was the point of bringing him back, from the Kravinoffs' perspective, or the writers? Maybe Slott has something planned coming up, but otherwise, I can't see the point in bringing a character back when they don't have a purpose in mind. I'd prefer the Kravinoffs try the ritual, it fails, and while they're dumbfounded their stupid thing didn't work, Spidey lays into them, more frustrated than ever they caused all this suffering for such a stupid reason. But I've never been much of a fan of all these little Kravens running around.