Okay, deep breath. You see, Harry Osborn…well, what I mean to say is a clone of Harry Osborn, or rather…all right, let’s start over. You know how there’s this mysterious villain called Kindred…you know what? Forget it, it’s not even worth it. Amazing Spider-Man #73 is written by Nick Spencer, drawn by Zé Carlos and Carlos Gómez with Marcelo Ferreira, colored by Alex Sinclair, and lettered by Joe Caramagna.
Retcons take many shapes and forms, but in longform serialized storytelling they’ve become a sort of necessary evil. They could be as subtle as just the simple fact that with Marvel’s sliding time scale, none of our heroes were active in the 1960’s, or as huge as the fact that Norman Osborn fathered two children with Gwen Stacy.
That specter has hung over the Amazing Spider-Man since 2004 in the infamous ‘Sins Past’ storyline. It’s the point where every regular Spider-Man reader can agree that J. Michael Straczynski’s once-celebrated Spider-Man run jumped the shark, and Mike Deodato drew the single panel that haunts comics readers most to this day. It gave the Spider-Man universe two new characters that are frankly toxic. And it tarnished Gwen Stacy forever.
Most writers try to ignore it. The few who don’t try to integrate Gabriel or Sarah Stacy into the larger fabric of the Marvel Universe or reflect on Norman’s grooming of Gwen Stacy. Those stories are usually forgotten or reviled immediately. Hell, look at this volume’s issue #50 for the most recent example of it.
So why did I just use around 200 words to talk about a story that a fandom has mutually decided doesn’t exist? Because now it canonically doesn’t.
Amazing Spider-Man #73, like #72, is a whole lot of nothing. After last week’s Sinister War #4, in which a bunch of people punched Spider-Man until they stopped (I’m not exaggerating), something needed to happen here. There needed to be some sort of denouement, even if it led into some bigger conflict in the conclusion to Nick Spencer’s three year run later this month.
Instead… Spider-Man ran through a corridor and MJ and Norman Osborn are confronted with the biggest Spider-retcon since Sins Past. It ended so quickly that I literally muttered “that’s it?!” when I reached the end of the issue. However, that retcon?
Harry Osborn was ten steps ahead of his father the whole time. After Norman could attribute his entire success to the literal Devil last issue, now Harry Osborn- a very intelligent but emotionally damaged character- is a master strategist. So he built a Gwen robot with Mendel Stromm. He hired Mysterio to hypnotize a bunch of people. And then he put his plan in motion.
Thus, Sins Past is no longer the story where Norman Osborn groomed Gwen Stacy and fathered two children with her. Sins Past is now the story where Norman Osborn — arguably the Lex Luthor of the Marvel Universe — fucked a robot. And Gabriel and Sarah Stacy? Clone-bots. I’m frankly surprised that Miles Warren wasn’t involved too.
For an issue that otherwise has no redeeming qualities outside of some very good if inconsistent Marvel house-style art, I love it. This issue is bad, boring and feels like it was written by someone who was just sick of Spider-Man and wants to move to some sweet Substack money. But in doing so, Nick Spencer just retconned away one of the worst Spider-Man stories of all time, and did so in the dumbest way possible.
Really, I think I love it.
But please, don’t give me more of this. Just give me Spider-Man Beyond. I’m ready for some Ben Reilly.
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.
