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The Amazing Spider-Man (1999) (Collected Editions) #32-34
The Amazing Spider-Man: The Gauntlet - The Complete Collection, Vol. 1
When Spider-Man battles Mysterio, the stakes are far more deadly than just smoke and mirrors! Find out exactly how dangerous the master of illusion can be in this collection of Spidey’s greatest showdowns with one of his oldest foes! Relive Quentin Beck’s sinister, Steve Ditko-drawn debut — and largerthan- life battles illustrated by John Romita Sr., Ross Andru, Marcos Martin and more! Mysterio’s mists and mysteries plague Peter Parker in wicked ways, from shrinking him to six inches tall to seemingly summoning all of Spidey’s greatest foes! But is it always Beck under the iconic fishbowl helmet — or are there multiple Mysterios? And can even death stop his deceptions?!
Collects Dark Reign: The List — Amazing Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Man (1999) #612-626 and Annual #37 and material from Web Of Spider-Man (2009) #2-5.
Collects Dark Reign: The List — Amazing Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Man (1999) #612-626 and Annual #37 and material from Web Of Spider-Man (2009) #2-5.
505 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 26, 2010
About the author
Dan Slott
2,087 books465 followersDan Slott is an American comic book writer, the current writer on Marvel Comics' The Amazing Spider-Man, and is best known for his work on books such as Arkham Asylum: Living Hell, She-Hulk, Silver Surfer, The Superior Spider-Man, and Ren & Stimpy.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 14, 2020
Not everything about this is horrible, but the bad definitely outweighs the good.
The Dark Reign issue is an extremely solid start. Slott delivers a satisfying narrative and Kubert knocks the art out of the park.
From there, it’s immediately downhill. Lente and Kitson team up for an unsurprisingly poor Electro origin that’s dull and uninspiring. This is followed by a supremely boring larger Electro story with decent art from Paul Azaceta. “The Other Woman” features the most insultingly bad art I’ve seen in an American comic. The other short story after that is pointless.
The second larger story follows Sandman. This features stellar Javier Pulido artwork that unfortunately illustrates one of Lente’s dull narratives. Lente also scribes the Rhino origin story, which is completely incongruous with Rhino’s characterisation in the entire rest of the book. I don’t know why they leaned on this guy to write so much.
Thankfully ASM 617 is a big step up, because Max Fiumara draws the hell out of this issue and it’s Joe Kelly on writing so it can actually manage to be satisfying. “The Walk”, which immediately follows the issue, is another solid one thanks to Kelly and Pulido.
The Mysterio origin follows the trend of the others by being dull. The next story, however, is Dan Slott at the top of his game with the always-incredible Marcos Martin on art. If he could draw Spider-Man forever I could be happy with that. Michael Lark’s issue is also a solid one on art. In this one, though, Michele is frustrating as usual and Carlie has some unearned umbrage with Peter.
Lente delivers a typical lame story with ASM 622 but “Stages of Grief” is fine. The Vulture origin is probably the strongest of the origin bits but that isn’t saying much. This is followed by the larger Vulture story. It’s not incredible but Mark Waid’s on writing and Azaceta’s back on pencils so it manages to work.
ASM 625 might have the best art of any single issue in the collection, and it’s a bummer they didn’t have Fiumara do more of these issues. Oksana being fridged isn’t my favourite but Kelly really manages to sell the Rhino’s pathos here. He even manages to make Norah a real character for once.
ASM 626 is fine. Lente unsurprisingly doesn’t seem to have a great grasp on Spider-Man’s powers, given that his Spider-Sense basically doesn’t work just so his powers can be pointlessly taken away for a bit. Then he can’t aim his web shooters at all, for some reason. At least the Michele crap is finally tied up, and Michael Gaydos does a fine job pencilling.
The annual is one of the better portions of the collection. The Cap story is genuinely pretty great, and the Stan Lee story is cute with good Pat Olliffe art.
Overall one could probably only read the Dan Slott- and Joe Kelly-penned stories (sans “The Other Woman”) plus the annual, and not miss anything of real value here. Given that this is a collection of 20 stories and my recommendation comprises only 10, I think it’s safe to say this book is on the whole not great.
The Dark Reign issue is an extremely solid start. Slott delivers a satisfying narrative and Kubert knocks the art out of the park.
From there, it’s immediately downhill. Lente and Kitson team up for an unsurprisingly poor Electro origin that’s dull and uninspiring. This is followed by a supremely boring larger Electro story with decent art from Paul Azaceta. “The Other Woman” features the most insultingly bad art I’ve seen in an American comic. The other short story after that is pointless.
The second larger story follows Sandman. This features stellar Javier Pulido artwork that unfortunately illustrates one of Lente’s dull narratives. Lente also scribes the Rhino origin story, which is completely incongruous with Rhino’s characterisation in the entire rest of the book. I don’t know why they leaned on this guy to write so much.
Thankfully ASM 617 is a big step up, because Max Fiumara draws the hell out of this issue and it’s Joe Kelly on writing so it can actually manage to be satisfying. “The Walk”, which immediately follows the issue, is another solid one thanks to Kelly and Pulido.
The Mysterio origin follows the trend of the others by being dull. The next story, however, is Dan Slott at the top of his game with the always-incredible Marcos Martin on art. If he could draw Spider-Man forever I could be happy with that. Michael Lark’s issue is also a solid one on art. In this one, though, Michele is frustrating as usual and Carlie has some unearned umbrage with Peter.
Lente delivers a typical lame story with ASM 622 but “Stages of Grief” is fine. The Vulture origin is probably the strongest of the origin bits but that isn’t saying much. This is followed by the larger Vulture story. It’s not incredible but Mark Waid’s on writing and Azaceta’s back on pencils so it manages to work.
ASM 625 might have the best art of any single issue in the collection, and it’s a bummer they didn’t have Fiumara do more of these issues. Oksana being fridged isn’t my favourite but Kelly really manages to sell the Rhino’s pathos here. He even manages to make Norah a real character for once.
ASM 626 is fine. Lente unsurprisingly doesn’t seem to have a great grasp on Spider-Man’s powers, given that his Spider-Sense basically doesn’t work just so his powers can be pointlessly taken away for a bit. Then he can’t aim his web shooters at all, for some reason. At least the Michele crap is finally tied up, and Michael Gaydos does a fine job pencilling.
The annual is one of the better portions of the collection. The Cap story is genuinely pretty great, and the Stan Lee story is cute with good Pat Olliffe art.
Overall one could probably only read the Dan Slott- and Joe Kelly-penned stories (sans “The Other Woman”) plus the annual, and not miss anything of real value here. Given that this is a collection of 20 stories and my recommendation comprises only 10, I think it’s safe to say this book is on the whole not great.
September 6, 2021
I loved this collection! Written by a lot of different writers, with a lot of different artists - this was pure enjoyment to read. Just a fun Spider-man collection which didn't get too dragged down by "an epic event" or "a conspiracy that takes 50 issues to unravel". I was at first worried - because there is a Gauntlet complete collection 1 and 2 totally about 1000 pages that it would be one long story arc but in actuality the thing that ties it together is there seemed to be an effort to go through Spider-man's key villains (Mysterio, Sandman, Vulture, Electro, Rhino and a touch of Morbius in this collection) but each adventure is self contained so you have some nice stories tied loosely together with the common theme. Why do I prefer this? Because I find today's comics take waaaay too long to tell a story and I like the days when an adventure could take one or two issues and were fun.
While none of these stories is a classic KEY ISSUE - I prefer it that way. Although there were a few things I didn't like. One, Aunt May gets infected by the Negative Man to become a horrible person and while everyone thinks "Aunt May is acting strange" and Peter even knows "Negative man can infect people to bring out their dark side because it happened to me once" but nobody puts it together - and the volume ends without this being resolved.
Two, I am beginning to actively hate Mark Waid's writing. It feels every time I read something written by him it is so stupid and dark and "I put my character through hell". He only writes a couple of issues - the Vulture ones - but those are easily the worst in the collection. He has JJJ accused of helping the Vulture - based on no evidence - and everyone turns on him. Peter Parker thinks "I know he is innocent so I will doctor a photo showing that". What?!? Record scratch. Peter would NEVER do that, he would never do it for JJJ (he never did it to save himself) and he must have known he would get caught. So stupid. But Waid does it so "Peter can be fired and go through hell. Oh, and Mary Jane Watson is a horrible human being when Peter calls her for support - "You only call me when you need a shoulder to cry on, I don't care if you are suicidal right now, call me when you are happy and want to party - that's what friends are for". This is the person we are supposed to believe deserves Peter's love?
But aside from that - pure enjoyment. :) I hope the second collection is also this much fun.
While none of these stories is a classic KEY ISSUE - I prefer it that way. Although there were a few things I didn't like. One, Aunt May gets infected by the Negative Man to become a horrible person and while everyone thinks "Aunt May is acting strange" and Peter even knows "Negative man can infect people to bring out their dark side because it happened to me once" but nobody puts it together - and the volume ends without this being resolved.
Two, I am beginning to actively hate Mark Waid's writing. It feels every time I read something written by him it is so stupid and dark and "I put my character through hell". He only writes a couple of issues - the Vulture ones - but those are easily the worst in the collection. He has JJJ accused of helping the Vulture - based on no evidence - and everyone turns on him. Peter Parker thinks "I know he is innocent so I will doctor a photo showing that". What?!? Record scratch. Peter would NEVER do that, he would never do it for JJJ (he never did it to save himself) and he must have known he would get caught. So stupid. But Waid does it so "Peter can be fired and go through hell. Oh, and Mary Jane Watson is a horrible human being when Peter calls her for support - "You only call me when you need a shoulder to cry on, I don't care if you are suicidal right now, call me when you are happy and want to party - that's what friends are for". This is the person we are supposed to believe deserves Peter's love?
But aside from that - pure enjoyment. :) I hope the second collection is also this much fun.
July 16, 2022
Stories are great but let down by some horrendous artwork some looks like it was drawn by a child
February 1, 2022
Don't have too much to say! This is by far the best Spider-Man I've read so far, ticks every box for me. The writing is spot on, this feels like the Peter Parker that's been in my head since childhood. It looks exactly how I imagine the classic Spidey comics looking, the colors especially. The choices made on artists between volumes was consistent making this 500 page long tome feel like one complete story.
Javier Pulido is pretty much the perfect Spider-Man artist for me. Really harkens back to style of classic comics while still creating innovative and breathtaking panel layouts.
Javier Pulido is pretty much the perfect Spider-Man artist for me. Really harkens back to style of classic comics while still creating innovative and breathtaking panel layouts.
August 20, 2019
A time period where I'm completely unfamiliar with what was going on in Spider-Man, or the Marvel universe, but still enjoyable.
It's the old troupe of a new villain showing up and sending all the old villains to weaken the hero, but it's told in a good way. They try to change it up some and get more story out of it besides just fighting. There is an actual plot beyond the action to the story.
A lot of the art is pretty good to. Spider-Man man tends to look better when he has a slightly "cartoon" style, versus a more realistic one.
It's the old troupe of a new villain showing up and sending all the old villains to weaken the hero, but it's told in a good way. They try to change it up some and get more story out of it besides just fighting. There is an actual plot beyond the action to the story.
A lot of the art is pretty good to. Spider-Man man tends to look better when he has a slightly "cartoon" style, versus a more realistic one.
November 3, 2025
This was a hot mess. The writing was lackluster, and the artwork, throughout was just bad!
The one redeeming quality of this collection was the Rhino stories. I enjoyed the humanity and ultimate downfall of the original Rhino, it was touching. That said, the rest of the stories were trash. The Web of Spider-Man entries were great recaps and somewhat modernizations of some of the origins of Spidey's rogues gallery, but the rest, utter trash.
I am still surprised how horrid the artwork was.
Skip this!
The one redeeming quality of this collection was the Rhino stories. I enjoyed the humanity and ultimate downfall of the original Rhino, it was touching. That said, the rest of the stories were trash. The Web of Spider-Man entries were great recaps and somewhat modernizations of some of the origins of Spidey's rogues gallery, but the rest, utter trash.
I am still surprised how horrid the artwork was.
Skip this!
March 27, 2020
3.5 Stars; however, the art in this volume knocks this up a notch.
Standard Spider-Man fare for the most part, with the Rhino story being the exception here. Good stuff from Joe Kelly. The satellite stories that focus on the villains are also enjoyable.
But the artwork in this volume is fantastic. Paul Azaceta, Javier Pulido, Max Fiumara, and Marcos Martin all in the same place?! Really a nice change from the standard "clean" work that you would find in a Big 2 comic book.
Standard Spider-Man fare for the most part, with the Rhino story being the exception here. Good stuff from Joe Kelly. The satellite stories that focus on the villains are also enjoyable.
But the artwork in this volume is fantastic. Paul Azaceta, Javier Pulido, Max Fiumara, and Marcos Martin all in the same place?! Really a nice change from the standard "clean" work that you would find in a Big 2 comic book.
October 8, 2022
I’ve always wanted to read The Gauntlet when it was coming in singles but held off because I wanted to read it complete. It does not disappoint so far. It’s like having the Sinister Six battle Spider-man individually. Trying to wear him down. The last couple of issues at the end of the collection felt pointless to me so I just skipped them, but overall a satisfying read. I can’t wait to see what comes next.
September 5, 2023
The Gauntlet is the most fun I’ve had with Spider-Man in a while, and issue 625 was a huge standout! Fantastic story and writing.
December 8, 2023
A real comic book's comic book, if ya know what I mean.
August 5, 2026
Divertidísimo este arco, todo lo que un cómic de Spidey debería ser
May 16, 2021
The book was alright but there have been many better stories in spidermans time.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews