The folks at McKay’s saw that $1 sticker and were like “too much!” Spidey travels to London on the trail of Knight & Fogg. His first trip since chasing Gwen there in ASM 96? I don’t recall. Maybe. How’s he gonna get there, tho? Well, as the issue opens, with Sal Buscema back to full strength, he’s gone to bother Thomas Fireheart while he’s jogging on the roof of his building. They recap their debt and how they don’t like each other just in case you don’t know.
The conditions of this debt are pretty nebulous, man. How does he know when he’s done it? When people cheered for Spidey a few issues back, was that enough? If only Puma had been there to see it. And going back to the start, if you asked the average New Yorker “Can you believe Puma mistook Spider-Man for a criminal?” I think the answer would generally be “Huh?” How was that public? Ah, well, whatever. I don’t actually know how or when this resolves, so I’m looking forward to seeing it.
Gotta sting a little for Kingpin to see Tombstone there with the competition. Or maybe not. Tomby gets up to get some coffee, and is approached by a goon who tries to buy him back for Kingpin. He punches that guy through the house out into the yard, but doesn’t rat Kingpin out, which piques his interest. But we’re off to the airport, where MJ is making out with Peter and keeping him from getting on his plane.
That makes zero sense to me.
Aw, come on, are we really gonna do this? With Jonathan Caesar still stalking ASM, even? Whatever. In London, Spidey is jetlagged and not sure where to start when some goons run out of a bank they just robbed. He deals with that in the typical fashion.
Spidey’s new pal takes him back to his office and gives him Knight & Fogg’s origin, which he knows in exacting detail in spite of also saying they’re just rumors and legends in the underworld. How can both these things be true? They were kids together, Fogg has always been a psychopath and bad influence, grew up, became hit men, hit a brilliant physicist in mid-experiment 5 years ago, and got shot with some kinda ray…
I’m supposed to believe that ray made that dude manifest a suit of armor while turning the other dude into smoke? Whatever, I doubt we ever see these guys again after this story. The inspector tells Spidey to go looking for them in their native Liverpool, where he finds Fogg’s aging dad and older sister walking home from a pub. But Fogg finds him, also.
Spidey crashes off a barge and then into the water, unconscious, as Mary Jane wakes up from a nightmare that he fell into darkness, time zones be damned, I suppose.
Oh boy. Amnesia. Gotta say, not my favorite trope. We’ll see how that goes next issue. This issue’s letter column concerns TAC 164, and forces editorial to give out no less than THREE No Prizes for readers spotting and explaining mistakes in the book. 164 felt a little off, but I hadn’t noticed just how off, I suppose.