This crow guy’s got Thor boots. I am so hostile toward this story that I’m not even gonna read all the prose slathered on every page. Sal Buscema has a reputation as a master storyteller, I doubt I need it, and I sure don’t want it. Crow is standing on top a big arc with the others looking up at him, not speaking.
I love this mystic BS guy calling him “Spider-Man.” I feel like The Earth Mother knows his secret. They try to attack, leaping at the same time, and are frozen in place as Black Crow tells them he wants to light their candle and he’s sho’ hard to handle now. Oh, wait, not he implies they’ve been reincarnated and connected all through human history as friend, enemies, brothers and what not and now the time has come, because that’s totally reasonable.
“This guy’s toying with us, and I won’t have it, so I’m gonna do exactly what he says!” I am breaking my word to skim the text on the next page and find Spider-Man recapping his recent struggles in the various books (Adjectiveless Spider-Man is never mentioned in stuff like this. I wonder if those books are just scrambling to fill 22 pages every month). Spider-Man has once again lost his confidence and his sense of purpose like he does every 2 minutes in DeMatteis comics and isn’t sure he can climb the mountain his Crow went up, but he tries, anyway. Some ways up, Crow appears, grabs his ankle and slams him into a wall.
DeMatteis Spider-Man is so repetitive! In a medium where repetition IS the medium! Like, Spider-Man has to fight Rhino every once in awhile, that’s how comics work, but he doesn’t have to have to be “pushed to the limit” mentally every 2-6 months!! Get some new material, man! Ugh, Spider-Man webs the crow, it turns to mist and flies off, he keeps after it. We switch to Fireheart, still not Puma, which seems at odds with this entire business.
Hey, buddy, he already sort-of-not-really saved his people. Insofar as he was allegedly created to repel The Beyonder and The Beyonder was repelled, if not by Puma. Check his Wikipedia, Black Crow, yer late. As they fight, Crow forces Fireheart to have a psychiatric breakthrough and realize he became an assassin as a rebellion against a destiny he didn’t want. Woo woo.
Sure. Elsewhere, Spider-Man is made to fight through misty versions of some of his foes (But all dressed as natives from the neck down and using native weaponry. Not a good look). Mercifully, for the like the first time in his entire career, he doesn’t immediately believe obvious illusions and pushes through them to Black Crow, who he really Buscema punches a few times and is about to chuck off a cliff, but begins wrestling with his conscience over it, because this is that kind of story. He doesn’t do it. I know, shocking. Back at his thing, Fireheard finds Black Crow in the form of a giant crow and goes crazy on him, turning into Puma as he beats and tears at his foe.
Spider-Man has ONCE AGAIN clawed back from the edge in a JM DeMatteis story, great! What a twist. Blakc Crow reappears to essentially say he’s made the right choice and Pumas hasn’t, and then Puma is there, leaping past them, saying he has work to do, as the background turns back into Manhattan. Crow tells Spider-Man there’s an innocent life at stake.
Dude, “the line between reality and imagination, illusion and truth” “grows gossamer-thin” like every 3rd story arc! There is no juice left in this bit, man!
Good of Black Crow to let him know Puma must be stopped from the action his own meddling made Puma take. Way to take responsibility, bro! This nonsense concludes next post.