Unlike most Omnibus I read, Amazing Spider-Man by JMS is actually one I hold dear to me. It's one of the comics that got me into comics back in my younger years. While Ultimate Spider-Man got me hooked into the High School life of teenage Peter parker, Amazing Spider-Man got me hooked on a older Peter in his late 20's, early 30's, trying to help his community as a teacher while dealing with adult problems and love life.

So going back years and years later to re-read it was a huge joy for me. That doesn't mean it's a automatic 5 out of 5 book though. Like with anything, certain things will hold up, sometimes get better, but also at times get worse. So when I cracked open this huge Omnibus I was hoping to atleast enjoy it as much as I did as a teenager.

The start of the whole Omnibus is Peter trying to deal with MJ leaving and him trying to find a purpose in the work life. With a suggestion by Aunt May he becomes a substitute teacher, a rare case of letting Peter's smarts showcase in the storyline. Soon into it we get Peter just naturally fitting the role as teacher and helping students in the class in different ways. We're also introduced to do major characters, Ezekiel and Morlun. Ezekiel has spider like abilities similar to Peter and quickly introduces a whole new mythos into Peter's life about Spider totems. At the same time Morlun is a vampire like creature on his way to murder people with these Spider totem powers, and his next target is Peter.

The first arc in this volume is hard to top, since it introduces two new key players, a new mythos, and a hectic battle of hell as Peter tries to fight back against Morlun in a brawl that is surely the web heads top 5 battles of all time. This also gets to showcase in a fight or die fight that is both heart pounding and a joy to watch. This is easily one of my favorite arcs of all time for Spider-Man and a wonderful way to jump into the character.

And honestly most of the volume continues in this fashion of being fun and exciting and always working well with the main trio of characters, Peter, MJ, and Aunt May. This is also the run Aunt May learns Peter's secret, which changes the dynamic greatly and gives us some excellent moments of Aunt May's wisdom.

The art is always pretty solid with some standout fight scenes and moments of Spider-man posing. I'm not always a mega-fan of Romita Jr. art but he fits Spider-Man very well. Especially when Peter is fully suited, it looks amazing. The faces on the human characters though can use some work sometimes.

The real negatives are just two storylines. There's a storyline with Loki about his daughter, and while not AWFUL it's also not nearly as interesting as it could be starring the trickster king. I thought it was okay but slowed the overall pacing of the book down for me. The big stinker is Sin's past, it's still pretty bad. If you don't know what happens here, basically it nearly ruins a character called Gwen from the older comic stories of Spider-Man. It's not completely unsalvable as there's still some great moments between Peter and MJ here but the damage to the overall character and the plot itself is pretty awful.

But besides that this is really a fantastic run, especially this half. It holds up as a favorite of mine and if it was for the two weaker arcs it would probably be a perfect book for me. But as it stands it does have some flaws I can't ignore. Looking at all my reviews on each individual arc, this lands at a amazing 4 out of 5. And it deserves it.