Under most circumstances, I would be very excited to welcome Ann Nocenti back to the blog, but given the garbage I just waded through in Spectacular and the subject matter of this issue, it’s gonna have to tread lightly. Yes, this issue begins the 3-part Return To The Mad Dog Ward, which I somehow wound up only owning the middle chapter of as a kid? Who knows? Kind of ironic that this was coming out alongside the Vermin story, given the original followed Kraven’s Last Hunt. Or maybe very much planned, I don’t know. Parts 1 & 2 of this came out alongside parts 2 & 3 of the Vermin thing. Ann is joined on her return to the Mad Dog Ward by Chris Marrinan on pencils, Sam De La Rosa on inks and Marie Javins on colors. Ok, ok. I’m shaking off the genuine disgust that Vermin story left me with (What even happened to Zemo? I don’t remember!). Let’s do it. Spider-Man’s swinging along when he sees a big guy in a cape on the roof of a building where a little girl has just dropped a teddy bear out a window.
Man, this comic is brand new. Acts like it’s literally never been opened.
Well, ok. We’re off. And we’re also off to a private wing of a hospital, where The Mad Dog Ward has been reopened. They got Dr. Hope from last time in a cell, where he’s constantly talking to himself, but they let him out to perform surgeries on their experiments. We learn Hope has used cybernetics and “mutant genes from various canines” to turn men into beasts here, and then we learn he’s just pretending to be insane and biding his time. Big info dump.
Meanwhile, Peter Parker goes to Aunt May’s house, late as usual, running through a list of excuses he can use. MJ, also present, asks him if he gets tired of lying all the time, and he defensively says “no” even though he was just thinking that.
That is a very Ann Nocenti setup. Like DeMatteis, she really got into exploring psychological themes. She just also made, and continues to make, comics that are enjoyable, which is nice of her. Recent-ish work like Seeds and Ruby Falls are at least as enjoyable as her classic work, maybe more so, in some ways, freed of the trapping of superheroes. Anyway, Spider-Man’s swingin’ around and what do you know, he happens on the robbery the Mad Dog patients were sent on. When what he takes for regular robbers are revealed as half-robot man-beasts, he realizes he’s getting more than he bargained for. Then there’s a completely insane 6-page add for D&D products. Six pages! Totally disrupts the book!
Wacky dialogue.
Marinnan’s really getting into his Erik Larsen impression, but only really on the Spider-Man figures. Spider-Man swings off, with the fight making him wonder if he was serious enough with Zero earlier, and then there he is, still standing on that same roof. Spidey drops in to tell him he can’t be putting people in danger, and describes his fight at the armored car as an example of what could go wrong. He does so in such detail and that Zero remembers patients at Pleasant Valley saying things similar to what the robbers were saying after they came back from surgery. Spidey says he’ll look into it, so they part on good-ish terms. Meanwhile, MJ is at home, in one of the absolute least-sexy gratuitous cheesecake pages I’ve ever seen, trying to learn lines for work and getting frustrated by how bad they are.
You can always expect the unexpected with Ann Nocenti. Elsewhere, Peter is late to his job photographing the chronic liars clinic, making up lies for why, and it’s genuinely pretty funny.
Well, that looks pretty suspect. MJ worries about how cheerful Peter is when he walks in, especially as he changes to Spider-Man immediately and leaves. She thinks she trusts him, but with all the lying he has to do, how can she be sure he’s telling the truth? Meanwhile, he’s thinking he got so nervous in that liar’s clinic that he blurted out that offer to work with Maggie, and regrets it. He says he’s got to go clear his head.
This isn’t exactly swashbuckling adventure, but at least it’s not a story motivated by tone deaf representations of 3 different characters with over-the-top horrible child abuse pasts. Well, yet. We’ll see what happens, won’t we?