Heavy sigh right outta the gate with this one. This stuff is a real slog to me, but I am weirdly excited to get to the crossover. I remember it being this buzz in comics at the time, being this shocking thing. I’m eager to see how I feel about it now. Shriek stops Carrion from killing Spider-Man, smashing him into a door.
Her literal plan is to make him so sad he becomes one of them. That is the comic I’m reading. They leave, and Spidey briefly wakes up in a lot of pain, and then passes back out, so we move our scene to the hospital. Mary Jane is at Aunt May’s bedside, asking a Dr. Caputo if she’s going to die. She’s had a stroke, and she’s in a coma. She’s had some brain swelling, but they just don’t know what’s going to happen at this point. Then there’s this:
There are elements in comics fandom that might call this a proto-Bendis page. I remember it stopping me in my tracks as a teen. “Why did they do that?” I don’t think it really works. I don’t know. Anyway, Shriek & Carrion have hilariously found clothing that more or less replicates their super suits in a store they’re robbing, so they look the part of villains now. “Shopping” reminds her of her childhood, which she’s tried to block out, and remembering some of it, including the vague implication of child abuse, causes her to lash out with her power, wrecking the place and scaring Carrion. It’s said that her craziness stems from child abuse, because that was really in fashion in the 90s and is mad gross.
“…let me go.” All bad guys (And The Hulk) were beaten or worse as kids and that’s why they are the way they are, case closed. What kinda message does that send to a kid trying to escape abuse reading this tripe? Ugh. Of course, if you’re looking for escapism, I’m not sure why you’d pick Spider-Man in this era. Or comics at all. At least some of Spidey’s super-peers, while maybe not starring in their best comics, were at least starring in entertaining ones. Some of us had picked our guy and were too dumb to stop buying his comics when they went bad, though. Anyway, Spider-Man comes home and falls asleep, wishing Carrion had killed him. /sigh
He swings to the hospital, finds May’s room and looks in. MJ sees him, and then he’s gone. She she follows him all the way back to their place, where she tries to talk to him, but he just says it’s not fair.
I almost miss The Kangaroo, at this point. Also, how does Peter keep turning smashed furniture into fist-sized sticks? I don’t think you can throw a dresser into a wall and get little fist-width sticks. I’m not a woodworker, I could be wrong. Shriek takes Carrion to his Mom’s house so she can command him to kill her, proving his loyalty, while at the Parker Residence, MJ comes into the bedroom, ludicrously saying she “straightened up the living room, no harm done,” just totally in denial, to find this nonsense:
I so distinctly recall getting to this page as a lad. “What? What is this?” The depths of my disappointment that this comic sucks now. Not just sucks, but is so very stupid. As Peter retreats into “The Spider,” why is he in a cocoon? Does he have spiders and caterpillars mixed up? And lest we forget, his webbing dissolves in an hour. This emo idiot is having to re-cocoon himself once an hour. And I know he is, because MJ comes back much later, in the night, and finds the cocoon open and Peter gone. They should’ve shown that. Shown his stupid pouting nonsense as he has to reweb himself. Spider-Man thinks “Someone died in that cocoon. Some one soft and vulnerable. Someone brutalized and frightened.” He also thinks “Rest in peace, Peter Parker. Long may you rot.”
Yes, the asinine mantra from Kraven’s Last Hunt is back. Spider-Man then swings DIRECTLY to Malcolm’s Mom’s house, like he somehow knows that’s where to find Shriek and Carrion, and find them he does, still arguing over whether he should kill his mom. Shriek “senses this isn’t the same man as before” and a bunch of other dreck, and it’s gonna be a fight next month.
The way I see it, because Peter’s not nearly THIS far gone in the other titles, because they’re not written by The Lord Of Emos, and because it’s impossible for all of them to be happening at once, they have to come first. Peter can’t be in “I am The Spider” mode here and cracking jokes in Web at the same time. Thing is, both Kavanaugh & Mackie started putting “I am The Spider” crap in their issues, too, once this was established. So their stories maybe begin before and finish after the ASM one. This is the best I can do. Thus, you can now see why I’ve chosen the reading order I have cobbled together. This is the moment when a reasonable person would cancel his pull list at the comic shop, but I kept on buying this garbage.