Amazing Spider-Man #614 (Ongoing)

brings a great close to the Electro storyline and is a satisfying first chapter in series direction. Waid's work strikes all the right chords and creates an atmosphere ripe for the return of more old school Spidey villains. The art by Paul Azaceta is appropriate to the reverse-throwback tone the issue takes. His rendering of Spider-Man and Jonah hearken back to silver and bronze age depictions of the characters with a dark shadow cast over it. However the real treat in this issue was seeing Waid bring his story full circle in what amounts to a love letter to the newspaper industry and silver and bronze age comic storytelling. Spider-Man first appeared in the comic book Amazing Fantasy #15 (Aug. 1962). The series was canceled with that issue, but response to the character was so positive that a solo title, The Amazing Spider-Man, was launched with a March 1963 cover-date. The character was created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist and co-plotter Steve Ditko, and the pair produced 38 issues from 1963 to 1966. The Amazing Spider-Man title is the character's flagship series. Most of the major characters and villains of the Spider-Man saga have been introduced here, and it is where key events occur. The title was published continuously until 1998 when Marvel Comics relaunched it with a new issue #1 (Jan. 1999), but on Spider-Man's 40th anniversary, this new title reverted to using the numbering of the original series, beginning again with issue #500 (Dec. 2003).

POWER TO THE PEOPLE Finale! Spidey and Mayor Jameson have to put their differences aside to pull the plug on the supercharged Electro once and for all--but at the cost of one of the best-known and most beloved landmarks in the Marvel Universe as THE GAUNTLET continues to rock Spidey's world! By: Mark Waid, Paul Azaceta, Marko Djurdjevic --

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