Here we go with a pretty big team-up cast and the comic that famously inspired Brian Michael Bendis to create Jessica Jones’ backstory with the Purple Man. Frank Miller writes, Herb Trimpe draws, Mike Esposito inks. Is this Frank Miller’s first writing credit on Spider-Man? His only one? I don’t honestly know. It opens with Spidey seeing a car accident involving a big purple sedan, out of which pops the Purple Man. He’s pretty mad at the two tough guys who hit him, so he orders them to beat each other unconscious. Spider-Man swoops in, but he doesn’t get too far.
(What I find extra cute about this scene is, 10 years later, writing Spider-Man, Erik Larsen will have Mary Jane tell Peter he’s out of touch, doesn’t know about current music, and Peter will try to defend himself by saying he likes Elvis Costello). Killgrave orders all concerned to forget he was ever there and leaves. The cops show up and confiscate the drugs, and this leave the Kingpin in a tough spot with his suppliers. Last time we saw him, you may recall Vanessa made Kingpin swear off crime forever, but over in Daredevil, Miller has just gotten done bringing Kingpin back to a life of crime (By endangering Vanessa, of course), and taken the first steps toward making him Daredevil’s greatest enemy. At a police station, the cops are outraged by the two goons saying they couldn’t remember why they were beating each other up, and then Daredevil shows up and guesses correctly what happened. The cops don’t buy that, either, but they did find the car belongs to Killgrave. Then DD pulls a Batman on them and vanishes. At Peter Parker’s apartment, Aunt May is making a very unusual visit to watch TV. When news of the incident with Killgrave comes on, Peter doesn’t remember it.
Peter checks his film, sees the incident, and it comes rushing back. Then I guess he just leaves Aunt May in his place and takes off to find The Purple Man. Meanwhile, Kingpin has sent a German assassin named… named Heinrich von Schnickel-Schnapp to kill The Purple Man. And people think of Frank Miller as making hyper serious comics. In addition to his name, The assassin also looks to be about a thousand years old. He catches up to Killgrave in the park, where I’m bettin’ this scene of Killgrave forcing a girl he sees at random to go on a carriage ride with him is the one that set Bendis on the path to Jessica Jones…
And there’s Grandpa: Assassin.
Spidey & DD scour the city for The Purple Man, but when they find him, an angry Spider-Man rushes in and gets told to go take a flying leap. DD barely saves him from killing himself. Ol’ DD seems to save Spider-Man’s life at least once every time they get together. While that was happening, Grandpa: Assassin brought Killgrave to the Kingpin, who wants to use his powers in a scheme. When Killgrave tries to walk out, Kingpin fires a warning shot from his cane, and then Purple Man orders him to blow his own brains out…
This is certainly Frank Miller’s Kingpin. We cut away to see what Power Man & Iron Fist are going to do to get roped into all this. They just got done seeing a kung fu movie… you know, the fad that inspired Iron Fist… and Iron Fist calls it sacrilege, which is kinda funny. Then a car drives by trying to gun down a young woman, and it’s time for them to hero up. They stop the car easily and leave the goons for the cops, taking the frightened young lady with them to Heroes For Hire, where, along with Misty Knight & Colleen Wing, they hear her story. She overheard some guys plotting to kill someone, so they sent people to kill her. She doesn’t know who the target is, only that it’s happening at the charity event tonight. Luke & Danny leave the girl with Misty & Colleen and head out to the event. Now we go find Moon Knight hitting up a stool pigeon who actually feeds pigeons for information. Someone tries to assassinate that guy, but Moon Knight is on the case.
Meanwhile, at the Daily Bugle, J. Jonah Jameson is gearing up to go host the charity event when he hears Joe Robertson telling someone about rumors of an assassination at the charity event…
I have no idea why they went to Joe Robertson, but that’s all the time they get. Then we check in with Kingpin telling Grandpa: Assassin to kill Purple Man as soon as he gives a speech at the event, and then we get to the show itself, where J. Jonah is opening the proceedings in his own inimitable fashion…
Matt sets a seat on fire with his neighbor’s cigar and yells “Fire!” causing a panic. Peter ducks out on poor Deb Whitman, of course, while all the assembled heroes get into their fightin’ gear. Moon Knight sees Spider-Man and assumes he’s here to kill Jameson, DD sees Moon Knight swinging for Spidey and assumes he’s going to kill HIM, then Luke & Danny run in and see DD fighting Moon Knight and Luke decides to go pile on when Spider-Man drops down among them and makes them calm down.
That’s a good twist. Luke smashes their way out onto the street in a full-page splash… except the show was being televised, so who knows, people all over the United States are probably on their way to New York to kill our heroes right now, and the streets are full of ‘em. As Spidey, Luke & Danny try not to fight the mob, DD and Moon Knight hang back and decide to go back in for Killgrave. MK easily takes out Grandpa: Assassin, and finding his special Killgrave-proof earplugs, steals them. DD confronts Killgrave, but his powers have grown stronger since they last met, and DD can no longer resist the command to strangle himself. Luckily, Moon Knight shows up. Purple Man tries to make him eat his cape, but…
And then on the next page, we check back in with the other heroes, where Herb Trimpe has made the weirdest possible layout choice:
Spidey looks like the Macy’s Parade Spider-Man float! What??? Spidey remembers what DD did for the cops standing on their heads, and swings up on a roof to blanket the raging crowd with his web. Then he brings Luke & Danny up on a roof to empty a water tower on the crowd to wake them up. The water does what Spidey hoped, shocking the people back to their senses.
He tells JJJ he’ll keep saving the town no matter what he says, and then we check in on the furious Kingpin.
Frank Miller wrote a pretty fun Spider-Man. Doesn’t seem like it would be his style, but he did well here.