Charles Vess! Always a treat. This month in ASM, the big Gang War story is coming to an end, so maybe this is the last weird issue trying to avoid it for Web. this one at least announces itself as “an untold tale from Spidey’s past, in the mighty Marvel manner!” on the splash. It has a Stefan Petrucha plot, a Len Kaminsky script, Tom Morgan pencils, Mike Esposito inks and George Roussos colors, and features Spidey in the red & blues despite the cover. Spider-Man is at a train yard, where 2 guys are trying to break into a freight car. He can’t imagine what they hope to find in there.
I’m used to Morgan’s stuff being a lot more raw. I wonder if Esposito is filing down the edges. The other guy gives Spidey a line about having a wife and kids and how he can’t go to jail, and Spider-Man lets him go, but it was all fake, of course. The next day, Peter Parker is at The Bugle, suffering a terrible headache and trying to pay attention to Robbie saying he can’t use the photos he took at the train yard. Then they head out to the bullpen and hear on TV that 2 guys stole $50,000 from a famine relief fundraiser, and guess who it was. Peter recognizes them, and realizes they were trying to break into a train car to leave town, and now he’s really mad at himself for letting one of them go. He lights out of there to try to find him.
Josie’s, the bar Daredevil is constantly shaking down, makes its 3rd appearance and 4th reference on the blog. We most recently saw it during the Sin-Eater mess in TAC 109. The hoods get up to fight Spider-Man, but then he’s hit with such a pain in his head that he crumples to the floor. They’re gonna kill him, but Josie really did call the cops, and they show up, making the hoods flee. A cop helps Spider-Man to his feet as Josie stammers out what happened to his partner. Then Spidey takes off, wondering what’s happening to him, somehow not connecting it to the gas despite all the times he’s been adversely affected by gas in the past. Meanwhile, the guy Spidey’s after, Willie, goes to his place, and finds his brother there, out of jail since they couldn’t charge him with anything and ready to shoot him for his betrayal. Gunter chases Willie out to the street, where Willie’s car won’t start. He’s saved by a cop driving by and telling him he’s in a no parking zone. Gunter pops out of an alley and says he’s decided to let Willie sweat awhile before he kills him, and Willie bolts.
Peter passes out from the pain as Robbie is trying to call him. Then we learned Willie placed a classified ad telling Spider-Man he gave him a second chance, and now he needs help. Willie’s in a diner, a nervous wreck, and then Gunter appears, scaring Willie out onto the street. Elsewhere, Peter wakes up and sees the news. He struggles with whether to go out, but eventually decides people will die if he can’t recover that money, and risks it. That night, Willie is waiting for Spider-Man in the train yard when Gunter appears and starts shooting. Willie dives under a train car and decides to make a break for a nearby tunnel.
A straight up swipe of a Romita, Sr. widely used in commercial products in the middle there. Shameless. Gunter finds them, and when he raises his gun, Spider-Man’s head starts pounding so bad he falls right off the ceiling and barely avoids getting hit by a train.
The ol’ web dummy trick. The dummy in panel 5 is a swipe, but I can’t quite place it.
All’s well that ends well, I suppose. Better filler than last issue, anyway. The letter page is so awash with dudes hyperventilating over Joy’s fancy dress in Web 20 that they run the picture again. Come on, boys, really. Also, one of the letter writers is Paul Newman, but probably not that one.