As I prepared to read this comic, I thought, “I wonder when things will get fun again.” And than I stopped myself and wondered in horror… will things get fun again? It’s late ‘92, after all. The darkening of comics is in full swing, and as we’ve seen from the period DeMatteis takes over ASM, we are headed for a disaster of darkness. I can’t be sure any of these comics will be fun all the way to the end of the Michelinie period. I don’t REMEMBER them being a nonstop sadness fest, but… That doesn’t mean they aren’t. Well. Let’s wrap this up. Spider-Man’s in the middle of the street after last issue when an ambulance comes racing at him. He flips over that and into the path of a cyclist, who he flips away from again, but who still crashes into someone on the sidewalk. This is a weird detour.
Spider-Man then webs the guy to his bike and the bike to a lamppost while yuckin’ it up like this wasn’t his fault. Did they just have some pages to kill here? Rags from last issue has eluded capture and is hiding out in a laundromat as Spider-Man does all this. He saw Elmo pick up the gun, and decides he better go find him and it. Elmo is still on the playground, playing with his new gun and hallucinating. Some other kids walk up to talk to him, and he tells them to tell the bully to meet him here at 9 o’clock and shows them his gun. Fun times.
Spider-Man is backed into the cafeteria by this feral man, who lunges at him and faceplants in a tray of food. We are definitely filling pages. More administrators file in and say they’ve called the cops, and one of them is the principal, so Spider-Man picks her up and takes her to her office to tell her there’s a gun in the school and he’s trying to stop something from happening.
Only 2 issues and we couldn’t get out of here without the bully being a sexual assault victim, great. He pushes that guy’s face into the water and then the kids Elmo talked to earlier come to give him the message. Then Rags is eating pizza when those boys come in talking about the the showdown at 9 tonight and mentioning Elmo’s gun, so now he can be there. Elmo, meanwhile, is wandering the streets, imagining monsters to shoot. It is maybe kind of implied he’s emulating “violent video games,” a beloved cause du jour of the era, even, as we see things as they are and then see his visions from first person view with a pixelated look that could either be implying fantasy or video games. So excited to get out of this book.
I note that it was “Robocop” last issue and is “Cybo-Cop” this issue. Did someone get scared? Marvel was actually publishing comics about Robocop at this time, because of course they were, you’d think they’d feel safe. Elmo is waiting and the kids are approaching and Rags is also on the scene as the parents demand to come along, so Spider-Man has them hang on tight and swings them off toward the playground. Meanwhile, the bully starts talking and Elmo pulls the gun. There’s a text-covered standoff where he doesn’t pull the trigger, and then the bully threatens to take it from him, and Elmo is about to shoot him.
That’s an interesting layout experiment by Rogers.
But is anyone going to do anything about the bullying? Is the bully ever going to get help? We’ll never know. What a fun little journey for us.