Civil War II: Amazing-Spider Man #1

Writer: Christos Gage
Artists: Travel Foreman and Rain Beredo
Publisher: Marvel

I was looking forward to this issue as a way of catching up with whatever's going on in Peter Parker's life at the moment. Spider-Man was always my favorite as a kid but I haven't really kept up with ASM for a while. I don't share the common opinion that Dan Slott is a bad writer (but he needs to chill on Twitter), Superior Spider-Man was great and the few AMS issues I've read from the period between the end of Superior and Secret Wars seemed decent enough. I do appreciate the direction he's taken and I like that under him Peter has grown and changed as a character, putting him and his supporting cast through the same things just because that is the status quo is pointless and there's already a few thousand books of him as a teenager (does anyone read Spidey?). With all that being said, I just find the other Spider-people more interesting at the moment. Spider-Man, Spider-Woman and Silk have all been good books and I don't have enough space in my life for them and AMS, especially considering there's 2 or 3 issues of the latter every month.

And yes, this issue isn't written by Slott but by Christos Gage, who previously wrote the Superior Spider-Man Age of Ultron tie-in, but he builds on the supporting cast that Slott created. The way Gage uses Peter is great, there's real chemistry between him and characters that I previously knew like Johnny Storm and walking plot device Ulysses, but most importantly the book also establishes lesser known characters like Clayton Cole through conversations no longer than a few panels. Most of the issue deals with Ulysses and Spider-Man going around the city having visions and webbing people up. I thought their relationship felt very natural, having them relate through their powers was a nice detail. Gage also does a good job keeping the tone light with Peter's quips. It's going to be interesting to see where he goes with some room to tell a story.
 

Another plus, at least for me, is that it seems like this will be mostly self-contained. This sets up the series in a way that it still ties into the theme of Civil War II but moving forward it doesn't have to entirely depend on the main storyline. The overall quality of this is somewhat surprising, I definitely went into it expecting the worst and I think one of the reasons might've been the cover art. Iron Man is very poorly drawn in there, his shape is just off, it kind of looks like a Liefeld drawing. However, Travel Foreman and Rain Beredo do a pretty good job with the art inside the book. Their work doesn't really stand out compared to other Marvel books but it has some nice details like Spider-Man's suit ripping during the first fight scene and Ulysses' facial expressions when meeting the Parker Industries crew.

This is shaping up to be a good Spider-Man story. Even if it might not be essential to this event, it looks like it'll be more measured than the mangling this character got during the first Civil War. Still not sure whether I'll pick this up next month but it might be worth giving it a shot.