Amazing Spider-Man 49 Creators: Writer- Zeb Wells, Pencils- John Romita Jr, Inks- Scott Hanna, Colors- Marcio Menyz, Letters- VC’s Joe Caramagna
Story
Glenn: Vampires! Let’s party like it’s the late 2000’s! So this issue of Amazing is a tie-in to Marvel’s big Blood Hunt event revolving around vampires where they’re bragging hard about a red band edition of the main series. I couldn’t care less about the main story, but this tie-in was very good, even great. It meant that the book was forced to dump a lot of the stupid stories dragging it down.
Instead we get a fun story of Spider-Man out of his element. Sure, he’s dealt with vampires before, but not as often as super powered crooks and the like. The dialogue was fun, the story was fast paced and it even had some Lost Boys logic to cure the White Rabbit from her recent turn to being a bit thirsty for blood.
It’s ultimately a throwaway issue, but a strong one. I literally just said to someone that you don’t have to always reinvent the wheel to produce something strong and this issue story wise is a great example of that.
Steve: I completely agree with Glenn….on one point. This was a throw away issue. Of course Marvel has to throw its flagship title into their ridiculously silly event, Blood Hunt. Fine, fine, I get it. That’s what happens. The problem here is that the series has been so hit and miss, largely miss, that throwing in a one off just seems like a further misstep. Now, the events of Amazing are even more choppy. 50 issues in and we have so many important dangling threads. I haven’t seen this much dangling since those testy chads in the Florida presidential race! We have Norman teetering on the edge of maintaining his “good” status. We have the bit with Tombstone, his daughter, and the underworld. We have the Sinister Six lurking. And, we have Ben Reilly hanging around with some knowledge of Peter’s future. I would think that 50 issues into a run we might have some closure. We don’t, and now we have a silly vampire story that does not serve the Amazing title.
For the good, the dialog was strong. I like Rabbit. So, there ya go.
Art
Glenn: One of my earliest experiences of seeing John Romita JR’s art was him drawing a vampire tale (Spider-Man 78 from 1996) so remember folks, if you read comics everything just comes back again if you stick around long enough.
It turns out JRJR is pretty great at drawing vampire things! I had a lot of nostalgia reading this due to the above so I probably liked the art and the issue more than normal due to this. Again, I love JRJR’s storytelling and he elevates this issue in terms of that significantly.
Steve: Ok, I’m going to surprise Glenn here. This JRJr was not bad, mostly because Spidey wore a mask the whole issue and there wasn’t a lot of emphasis on faces. JRJr really shines on his layouts and actions. Here, he really excels- wonderful visual storytelling. I really enjoyed the page with Spidey sneaking in to kill the vampire that infected Rabbit. The sequence was beautifully rendered.
Overall
Glenn:
It turns out that all Amazing needs to do to have a great issue is to dump all its ongoing stories, who knew?
Next: Goblin Spider (help)! 4 Webshooters 
Steve: I really feel tht this is largely throw away, but the art really saves this one. One Webshooter for story, but art brings it to 3 Webshooters 
Next time: more Spidey