[Dr Kain]

Well, I just finished reading the last few issues to Amazing Spider-Man Volume 4 and I highly enjoyed it. Sure, Conway's stories weren't the masterpieces that Lee's were, but I didn't think they were as bad as some people made them out to be. At least, for the most part as there are quite a bit of flaws.

The Doc Ock/Aunt May wedding stuff was atrocious and the whole thing about Aunt May inhereting some Shadow Moses made even less sense than the wedding itself. I guess this is what this Canadian secret agent guy was trying to get in touch with Peter over when he ran into Hulk, but even that was not exactly well written. That entire plot seemed halfassed and forced. Easily the first true bomb off the entire comic run. It goes right up there with One More Day.

I still do not agree with the killing of Gwen though. There was so much more they could have done with Peter and her together, but instead of actually committing to a relationship, they copped out and killed her.

Then there's Harry becoming Goblin. I don't know what to think of it. It feels weird that Harry somehow knew his dad was GG and then managed to swipe his clothes and became GG. There's no explanation for it at all. Also, he somehow manages to kidnap Flash, MJ, and May from a hospital, ties them up, straps a bomb to May, tells Peter he has 6 minutes to rescue one of them, and Peter has time to knock out Harry, go home to get his spare webshooters, and then go to May all in six minutes? o_O I guess they're working by DBZ time.

I am really intrigued by The Jackal. I really know nothing about him other than he is supposedly Peter's college professor (an interesting idea given the Vulture copycat story). I am very curious to see where this goes and it feels like they were trying to add in a new mystery element harkening back to the Green Goblin adventures in the early years. A shame Volume 5 is not going to be out probably for another few years.

Speaking of the Vulture copy cat story, that happens twice in this book. First we have one with another guy pretending to be Vulture, and then one of a guy pretending to be Mysterio. Though, I highly enjoyed the Mysterio story. I had no idea someone other than Quentin Beck donned Mysterio in the comics, so this means they could do that in the MCU. The best thing about this story though was trashing the Spider Buggy.

I also have to say that while I miss Romita's artwork, Ross Andru is doing a fine job of bringing his own style to the comics. In fact, I love the details he is putting into his backgrounds. The house from a story with this dude called the Mindworm was quite impressive. Then there are some top notch backgrounds like a huge advertisement for alcohol above a building as it looked very realistic. He most certainly makes for a better Spider-Man artist than he did for Flash. My only complaint is he keeps forgetting to draw Spidey's webwings.

It was great seeing Morbius return and getting to read the first appearance of Punisher was interesting. It's kind of strange to know such a flagship character got his start in Spider-Man, but then again, a lot of general characters have such as Kingpin.

Man, it's kind of weird because now that I'm actually typing up my thoughts on these issues, I'm starting to realize there were a lot of flaws with these stories even though I didn't feel that way when I read through them. Well either way, I was entertained and I really do hope it doesn't take two years for Volume 5 to come out as I speculated above.

Lastly, one of my favorite scenes of the entire book was Jameson throwing his shoe at Spider-Man and it flies out the window and then he realizes what he did was stupid. :lol

This weekend it will be time to send in the clones.