Comic Book Review: ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ #694

When Spider-Man’s sidekick (or is it the other way around?), Alpha, appeared in ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ #692, it was a fun and interesting intro. Then last issue things ramped up since Spider-Man was slowly losing control of Alpha. The boy was basking in his celebrity, belittling Marvels best, and canoodling with every teenage girl he could get his hands on. He was pretty much what most teenage boys would be if they were suddenly given wild superpowers and fame. Worse yet, since the boy is essentially one of the most powerful beings in the Marvel Universe, having him as a loose cannon didn’t sit well with any of Spidey’s teammates in the Avengers or the Fantastic Four. So now it’s up to Peter to reign Alpha in before things get out of hand…

As this issue opens, Peter Parker calls Andy (that’s Alpha for those who missed a few issues) to tell the lad to come in for his weekly monitoring. This is to make sure that the Parker particles that give Alpha his powers aren’t doing anything unpredictable. Andy blows Peter off and says he’ll come in twice next week. Oh no! Peter’s not having any of that! He’s got to get a grip on this kid before he causes some serious damage.

Elsewhere, the Avengers are battling the villain Terminus and having a tough time of it. When Alpha arrives to aid his Avengers teammates (or take over for them entirely as the case may be), things go awry yet again and lives are put in danger. I won’t tell you who’s lives but it ends with Peter doing something drastic… at least as far as Alpha is concerned.

When the character of Alphas was first announced as “Spidey gets a sidekick for his 50th anniversary”, the powers at Marvel said that this was a permanent thing and that we wouldn’t see Alpha for a few issues and then things would just return to normal. Well… with the events of this issue, that’s pretty much exactly what happened. Alpha was shelved, presumably to allow Spider-Man to focus on the coming Hobgoblin storyline. This has me torn. I like the character and the idea of Alpha but the return of the original Hobgoblin has to take precedence. I just wish writer Dan Slott could’ve found a way to move into the new story while keeping Alpha around as the promised permanent sidekick to Spidey.

Then again, Slott has pulled a few cool plot twists in the past so the shelving of Alpha may have just been a ruse and the kid could come back and cause even more havoc. I guess we’ll find out next week when ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ #695 hits the comic book shelves.

Final Score: