Whatever a Spider Can’s Amazing Spider-Man #4 review

For the Original Sin tie-in issue Amazing Spider-Man #4 was fairly light on explaining the events of the story-arc and the Watcher’s murder and instead focused specifically on the Spider-Man elements of the story as you’d very well hope so in a Spider-Man comic. However much of the events of the previous three issues took a back seat to a new star in the making, the irrepressible Cindy Moon aka Silk.  Check out our recap now!

I think it’s probably best to head straight for the defining feature of this issue and that’s the debut of what we’re all expecting to be a massively major Spider-Man

supporting character going forward, and that person is of course the secret second Spider-bite victim Cindy Moon aka Silk who we’ve seen in the past few issues had been locked away by Ezekiel with Spider-Man being completely unaware of her existence.

That was of course until Spider-Man’s ‘Original Sin’ was revealed to him in that fateful moment when the Watcher’s eye is brandished and used a bomb revealing secrets to each and every one of our Marvel heroes. I’ve not been following the Original Sin storyline too closely, in fact all I really know about it I picked up from this issue, so I guess that means that Dan Slott did a good job of introducing just enough story elements from the current massive Marvel event to make it understandable to people just reading Spider-Man whilst keeping it light enough to not get in the way of the narrative we all want – Spider-Mans.

What follows is a rip-roaringly fast-paced and slightly bi-polar character introduction as we meet Cindy Moon, at first she’s angry, then she’s relieved, then she’s angry, then she’s horny. As far as introductions go it was extremely enjoyable but if you try to get a grasp on what Cindy is like, or how she’ll play out then you’ll just end of getting whiplash due to her fairly erratic opening moments. Don’t get me wrong, none of this is a bad thing. It’s important that Slott still maintains an element of mystery with his new ‘joker in the pack’ as it were. Ground breaking moments are being made here and you wouldn’t want the writing to rush it.

I also particularly liked how Dan Slott used the ‘Original Sin’ storyline to segway straight into the Spider-centric storyline event of the Spider-Verse. It’s clear from the get-go that Cindy is an integral part of the Spider-Verse and Morlun’s ‘Great Hunt’. It’s clever to use the storyline in such a way that Cindy’s introduction helps to lay some of the initial groundwork as well as introduce the storyline’s central villain in Morlun as well as highlighting beyond any doubt that the ‘Spider-Bride’ is firmly at the center of the unfolding web.

Basically Cindy Moon has me completely intrigued and that’s a great thing. Her powers are better than Peter’s, which I think is slightly lazy writing, but I can let it slide. She’s looking for her family, so she already has a goal, she has a huge mystery surrounding her with Ezekiel locking her away and Morlun sensing her and who can forget to mention that shocking issue ending moment where Peter and Cindy passionately kiss after fighting. How many characters can say they snogged Spider-Man on their debut, not many!

But to say that the issue was all about Cindy isn’t doing the entire comic justice. Slott managed to manoeuvrings everything else around the central, quite rightly dominating introduction of Silk. We see that Parker Industries’ work on the anti-Electro measures are coming along, we see that both Anna Marie and Sajani are getting tired of Peter ducking his business responsibilities and we see Felicia Hardy’s Black Cat continuing her campaign against Spider-Man by kidnapping someone close to him. To put it bluntly all of the plot-threads that were already established still progressed despite the issue having one main focus which is brilliant.

If I’m perfectly honest I found Amazing Spider-Man to be quite rudimentary thus far, there was so much hype coming off of Superior Spider-Man that I was expecting to be blown away, instead it was Brian Michael Bendis’ Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man that really caught my attention. However, after this issue I’d say the playing field has well and truly been leveled. I can’t wait to see what happens in #5

Check out Whatever a Spider Can’s other Spidey comic book recaps and reviews
Amazing Spider-Man #1 recap, and review
Amazing Spider-Man #2 recap, and review
Amazing Spider-Man #3 recap, and review
Amazing Spider-Man #4 recap
Amazing Spider-Man: Learning to Crawl #1.1 recap, and review
Amazing Spider-Man: Learning to Crawl #1.2 recap, and review

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