Spider-Man’s been through a rough few issues. Joe Kelly’s run has been swinging between wild and weird: hallucinations, poisoned soda, and a Hobgoblin with a pharma scheme. In Amazing Spider-Man #4, Spidey barely survived a warehouse battle with Itsy Bitsy while Hobgoblin raced off to finish his twisted plan. Now in issue #5, the story comes to a head at Rand Industries with Spider-Man scrambling to stop a city-wide disaster. But does this finale stick the landing?
“The Final Web” delivers a punchy, high-stakes spectacle, complete with a side of mushrooms that will leave you thinking, ‘…wait, what?’ The comic open with Rand Industries already under siege. Hobgoblin is tearing through the place, dead-set on silencing whistleblowers who uncovered his plan to lace Queen’s Cola with an anxiety-inducing compound. Spider-Man arrives just in time, bruised, battered, and running on fumes. What follows is a slugfest that’s gorgeously rendered by Pepe Larraz, with page after page of dynamic, cinematic action. Blue lightning crackles through orange chaos as Hobgoblin clashes with Spider-Man amid crumbling tech and flying debris. Meanwhile, Peter’s allies get involved, including Brian Nehring and a very unexpected, very funky weaponized mushroom. Yeah. You read that right.
It’s a chaotic climax, spliced with flashbacks that add emotional weight and connect Peter’s current crisis to his deeper fears. No time is wasted, the issue moves fast, and by the end, we’ve got closure. Sort of.
Credit: Marvel Comics
The action in this issue is stellar, but the plan was hilariously flawed. I wanted to love this more than I did. Don’t get me wrong, it feels like Spider-Man. You’ve got the jokes under pressure, the guilt, the underdog fight energy. The art? Out of this world. Larraz and Gracia are absolutely cooking. Some panels practically hum with motion. You could frame the splash pages and put them in a museum.
But as I sat there flipping pages, enjoying the ride, my brain started going: “Wait a second… this was the plan?” Hobgoblin’s whole master scheme was to poison cola, make people anxious, then sell the cure? That’s the evil genius play? Forget Lex Luthor, this is more like Dr. Oz with a glider. It’s not even clear how he thought this would scale. What if people just stopped drinking soda? Or got anxious and went to therapy instead of a drug dealer?
And then there’s the mushroom moment. It’s kind of great, bold, weird, unexpected, but also completely out of left field. You’ve got science researchers suddenly pulling out fear-spore fungus like it’s just another item in the office pantry. It works, it’s fun, but it also feels like the kind of “just go with it” moment you only buy because it’s Spider-Man and we’re used to weird stuff happening on the fly.
Credit: Marvel Comics
There’s also Itsy Bitsy, who’s… just gone? Wrapped up in webbing somewhere? Still dangerous? Still alive? Who knows! The finale wants to move on before answering. The pacing speeds up just when things should be slowing down for impact. Emotional beats like Peter making amends with Aunt May feel like they’re trying to do too much, too fast.
Amazing Spider-Man #5 wraps a good-not-great end to a fun-but-flawed arc of Joe Kelly’s run with energy and heart, but not much logic. The action is bombastic, the art is some of the best in Marvel right now, and Peter Parker feels like Peter Parker, guilt-ridden, heroic, and endlessly resilient. But the story resolution fumbles. The villain’s scheme doesn’t hold water (or cola), and the pacing sacrifices some narrative satisfaction. Kelly’s ideas are interesting, touching on corporate greed, mental health, and manipulation, but they needed more space to breathe.
‘Amazing Spider-Man’ #5 Sees Mushroom, a Goblin, and One Hell of a Web-Slinging Finale!
Amazing Spider-Man #5 wraps a good-not-great end to a fun-but-flawed arc of Joe Kelly’s run with energy and heart, but not much logic. The action is bombastic, the art is some of the best in Marvel right now, and Peter Parker feels like Peter Parker, guilt-ridden, heroic, and endlessly resilient. But the story resolution fumbles.
