My comic buying could be really spotty in this time. I didn’t exactly have a ton of disposable income at 15, and comic shops could be unreliable, even if you had a pull list. And sometimes I’d get something if it looked interesting, or skip it if it didn’t. I can’t say what lead to me having part 1 of this story, but not part 2, but I only got this one a few months ago as of this writing. All-new to me this post. Probably just got all the ones with the animated series stuff packed, now that I think about it. They claimed to come with an animation cell, but what they meant was a replica of an animation cell. Not the same thing! Anyway. Bloody Mary has her next target in the sights of her rifle, a businessman she says is an abuser and killer of women, but she decides a sniper shot is too good for him, and wants him to suffer. Then she notices the tracer on her boot.
So, Typhoid knows about Mary, and she seems to know about Bloody Mary. Mary doesn’t know about either of her more dangerous personas. What’s Bloody know about herself? Not sure. She sure did just step out of her telekinetically assembled trash suit like it’s an Iron Man armor, though. Then there’s this:
That editorial note is nuts. “Oh, what, did you want to have a logical progression of the action from one issue to the next that you can easily follow? You some kinda NERD?” Why wouldn’t Spider-Man follow her into the library? This is confusing. Notice how we don’t see his face. He finds the remnants of Bloody Mary’s suit, and realizes he now has no idea how to find her. So he goes home, seeming resentful of having a home to go to.
It’s beginning to feel like this was a 3-issue story and the middle didn’t get published. Peter doesn’t want MJ to see the piece of Bloody Mary’s suit he kept, and she accuses him of being obsessed, but he says he just wonders what she’s hiding from in her other personalities. MJ asks him what he’s hiding from.
I don’t even know what to say about the ideas about psychology and feminism expressed on this page, so I’m just moving on. Peter calls Joe Robertson to ask if he’s done the checking up on Bloody Mary’s next target he asked him to, again making it feel like we missed an issue, as Typhoid arranges for poor Mary Walker to have an encounter with said target to get into his home.
Mary sees a news story about “the new serial killer” on TV, complete with a composite sketch of Bloody Mary made from eye-witness accounts (missing chapter!), which triggers her transformation. To Typhoid, rather than Bloody, which doesn’t seem quite right, but whatever, Typhoid’s the one who likes to torment and then punish men with sexuality, so this is her scene. Her creepy target is totally into her, talking about how women love pain and such as she telekinetically brings a whole cloud of knives flying at him, and then using them to make her next Bloody Mary suit. But, as she recites the list of crimes he’s committed, including two murders, guess who shows up for some armchair psychiatry?
This is the 90s, so there’s a totally self-indulgent 2-page splash of the two jump kicking toward each other, and it’s fightin’ time. BM says the world made her who she is, that abusive men like him made her, and then she hits him where he lives.
She went and said the “G” word. Spidey’s not quite morose enough to just let her kill him, though, and catches her wrist. They keep yelling at each other about abuse and justice, and Spider-Man keeps trying to convince her he doesn’t want to fight.
Fight officially over. The guy tries to kill himself, but Spidey stops him. Then the girl starts talking.
Well, alright. Mary turns herself in to the authorities to be taken to Ravencroft, the recently created Spider-Man version of Arkham Asylum that seems even worse at helping its patients, and that’s that for this story. I wonder if this was Nocenti’s idea of closing the book on Typhoid. She had been treated very poorly by Daredevil stories after Nocenti’s long tenure ended. But, of course, this would not be her last appearance. I think it’s her last appearance in a Spidey comic, though. Still really think a middle issue didn’t get made, and that’s awfully strange. At any rate, next post will be our first look at an issue of Adjectiveless Spider-Man. Maybe that’ll be cool.