I gotta say, the eye removal was underwhelming. Sure, I read the spoilers, but even then... honestly, if I hadn't known ahead of time, I don't know if I'd have been able to tell just from the art. With something that greusome, something that's supposed to shock the reader, it's a good idea to make the art, y'know, shocking. The whole issue was one of those things where you can tell what the creators were going for, but also that they didn't achieve it.
The intent seems to have been, show Peter in denial about his impending death, show him going crazy for a way to avoid it, then show him finally accept it (hence the really quite good voice-over of him getting up in the morning), and then just as he's found peace, WHAM! He has to fight for his life harder than he's ever fought before.
Then the fight itself was supposed to play out just like 99% of action movies. Unstoppable villain walks very, very slowly towards hero who gives it everything he has, but gets beaten down anyway. This is the formula. Just as the hero is thrashed and humiliated, just as you think 'Wow, they're really going to let him die!', said hero gets up and lays the smack down on the villain using sheer willpower of some kind: fighting for a loved one/ideal, memory of loved ones, flashback to training/inspiration, or in this case reminding himself that, fuckit man, he's fuckin' Spider-man. Having run through the formula, they then have Morlun get up, looking no worse for wear, and say, 'Nice try, but it's over,' and proceed to tear him a new eyehole.
The intent was good. The intent was to mess with our preconcieved expectations of an action/adventure story, but the execution was a little too contrived, a little too planned. It had all its ducks in a row, but it didn't actually hit us at gut level. Too bad, really.
Posted by orion at November 27, 2005 2:04 PM