Well, that certainly looks different from where we left things last issue. Time for our team of Bill Mantlo, Jim Mooney & Frank Springer to bring this 7-issue ramble to a close. Peter tried to tell the self-professed Living Clone of Professor Miles Warren that even Warren knew he’d gone crazy by the time he died, but Carrion isn’t having it.
Before we can find out what’s in the aforementioned seething crucible, Peter recaps what’s been going on, because stories this long were really unusual back then. Which actually serves the plot, as it gives Carrion a chance to reveal yet another superpower: Telepathy! He literally knows Peter’s every thought. Carrion explains that Warren started cooking him up riiight before going off to his doom, but the cloning tube malfunctioned, and the clone grew through its whole life and died, but the psuedo-science somehow kept the body alive, only to be awakened recently by… Randy Vale bumbling into the lab Warren worked in. Carrion made him the friendly offer of servitude or death, so that’s how that goes, but didn’t tell him Peter’s secret. Then he talks about discovering all his powers and promising Vale Spider-Man’s power in exchange for his servitude.
Well… ok. So the big slime monster is sort of a clone of Peter? Uh… that’s something. Carrion calls it The Spider Amoeba, which is pretty hilarious, and it slithers on up to Pete as promised, about to crush him to death when Darter shows back up.
You just can’t find good help you’ve forced to be on your team under penalty of death these days, I swear. Carrion throws his patented Death Dust in Darter’s face, and that’s it for him.
That’s gross. Gettin’ real EC Comics with it. Is that even Comics Code legal? Who knows, but as Vale’s dying, he drops his gun, which happens to shoot the table Peter’s strapped to, giving him a chance to escape. What spectacular luck. Spider-Man is pretty furious to have just been made to watch a man die, and comes at Carrion with everything he’s got. Carrion doesn’t help himself by saying he plans to kill Peter’s loved ones, starting with Aunt May. Don’t you know that just makes the hero stronger in situations like this? But while he was slapping around the living corpse, his goopy bro has slipped up onto the ceiling and gets the drop on him. But that’s when White Tiger shows back up. He tries to attack Carrion, but that doesn’t go so well…
Peter gets loose from the goo monster, which attacks the closest thing to it, which would be Carrion now. We switch perspectives to White Tiger, who can’t tell what’s happening through the fire and bursts out a window to escape. The cops have just arrived on the scene as he does. Back inside, Carrion tries to levitate away from the creature, but finds that doesn’t work too well…
The building starts coming down as Carrion is consumed by the thing, and Spider-Man smashes out through a window to discover it’s snowing. And, thinking about the horrors he’s just lived through, gets kinda poetic about it.
And that’s probably the last we’ll ever see of Carrion, yes sir. These kinda villains never find a way to return. This was one crazy, meandering story. There was no real reason to chain the Maggia/DD story to this Carrion business. It’s always bugged me that Carrion looks so much like The Green Goblin. When I was a kid, reading random Carrion appearances with no backstory or internet, I thought he must have something to do with the Goblin. Similar outfits, they both carry a purse. Kind of a design flaw. Anyway, there you go. The end of a saga that took more than half a year to publish. But I’m afraid I don’t have the next issue, so you’re going to have to find out about “Night of the Iguana” all on your own.