Back to Fanfare much more quickly this time, but this is the last one. The series won’t last much longer after this. And look, Michael Golden is back, too. Looks like we’re in for a weird one. The script and co-plot is by Bill Mantlo, with co-plot, lines & colors all by Golden. Al Milgrom’s customary editorial cartoon on the inside front cover implies Golden has had this job more or less since he did Fanfare 1-2 and only just turned it in. Yipes! It opens with some pretty different scenes. First, we briefly see a sick Peter Parker & J. Jonah Jameson with a city councilman talking about gentrifying an old neighborhood, with JJJ strongly against running out the poor people (JJJ is very complicated). Then we switch to Earth orbit, where Nick Fury is piloting a spacecraft with one other passenger:
Look at those colors! How is this gonna get back to Peter & JJJ touring tenements?
Uh-oh. Fury takes Hulk back to The Helicarrier, where scientists are trying to figure out why he seems comatose and feverish when he snaps awake and starts tearing the place apart.and his eyes are red, like on the cover. That wasn’t just a weird decision! He knocks out Nick and rampages out of the medical wing as people scramble to try to contain him.
These pages might just be worth a 4 year wait, my goodness! SHIELD blows Hulk out an airlock, sending him plummeting to Earth. That seems wildly irresponsible. Meanwhile, also on Earth, Peter Parker is being mugged for his camera by Bill Mantlo’s typically uncomfortable stereotypes of people of color when Hulk hits the ground like a missile, scattering everyone and lettting Peter escape without blowing his secret. Moments later, his fleeing muggers are saved from a big sign falling on them by the arrival of Spider-Man. That’s nice of him.
You know it! Up on the Helicarrier, they’ve found Hulk in The Bronx, and that Waldo guy is shocked he’s still alive. The Contessa tells him some of them have Hulk experience, and if he hadn’t pulled rank, thousands wouldn’t be endangered. He blows that off. I bet this guy’s career at SHIELD is a long one. On the ground, Spidey tries to reason with Hulk, who had the mind of Bruce Banner last he knew, but he’s going to be disappointed. Back on the helicarrier, Waldo is still being a jerk as he deploys “destruct-drones” to take care of Hulk, like that’s gonna do anything.
Spidey notices the weird parasite on Hulk’s neck and begins to get the picture, but his increasing illness is making it very hard to play supehero, and then those dub drones show up.
Michael Golden, man! Wow. Spidey barely avoids a drone as it zooms toward Hulk, who smashes a car into it and a nearby building, bringing the whole thing down on himself and the drone. The other 2 drones swing back around just as Hulk explodes out of another building. Spidey is now so sick he can barely move, but he sees a woman & child trapped in the now very rickety building and heads up to try to save her and Hulk and the drones fight it out below. He grabs them just as the building is blown up by the drones. Up on the helicarrier, Waldo is finally getting the clue that he’s really messed up, and asks how he can recall the drones.
But then Hulk rises up, smashing the drone just as the last one catches back up with him, our hero and victims caught between the two. Spidey dives himself & passengers into a stairwell a drunk was hiding in, and begins webbing the whole thing up to reinforce it in the hopes that help will arrive. Hulk gets blasted into a nearby wall, apparently hit so hard that he regains some of his senses, even recognizing Spider-Man’s voice below.
Pretty wild ride. Sometimes you just gotta let a master artist go crazy. 32 pages of madness from Michael Golden is well worth the price of entry!