Weird caption. Weird colors on this cover. There’s light blue fire back there. This month’s inevitable fill-in is by writer Dwight Zimmerman, penciler/inker Dave Simons, and colorist Marie Severin. Well, at least the colors will look nice. Apparently this writer wrote a handful of comics, and comics-related books, but is mostly known for non-fiction history books. I forgot for a second that the guy at the turn of the century who wrote several rather controversial Marvel comics was RON Zimmerman, and thought this was an early work by him. This issue opens with a car commercial.
Not everyday you see a good old fashioned battle axe.
Aaaaaalrighty. “Izod.” Here’s some exposition:
So someone’s trying to kill this guy so they can take control of his company when it falls to his son, I guess? I dunno, whatever, ol boy calls to triple security on his son, but then discovers his son is missing and his guards are dead. He rushes out to a car, calling his people and telling them to end the strike by giving labor whatever they want, then drives off looking for his kid. Meanwhile, Spider-Man suits up and heads out, in a panel swiped from Steve Ditko, which is not a solid start, Dave. We cut to this Headhunter goon having taken the boy somewheres and discovered Spidey’s tracer, then to Camino bursting into the office of some big time guy he accuses of extortion.
I feel like I’ve walked into the 3rd act of a movie I didn’t want to watch. Spider-Man arrives at the ESI building following his tracer and scuttles into an air vent to go look around, and eventually finds the goons dragging Camino down a hallway. He bursts in and incapacitates them, and Camino tells him that Headhunter guy kidnapped his son, and is in the next room, which is where the tracer signal is coming from. Simons swipes 3 Ditko Spideys in these 2 pages.
A rather crappy Romita swip in panel 7. Spidey sets out looking for Headhunter, and the goons outside wake up and come looking for Camino. Spidey finds a dummy in a sleeping bag left as a trap by Headhunter, but before he can fall into said trap, the goons turn on the lights, triggering a bomb, killing themselves, and making the impact of the bomb knock one of this room’s endless rows of filing cabinets on Danny’s leg, pinning him to the floor. Then Headhunter triggera a rather absurd amount of traps, including a deafening wall of sound that incapacitates Spider-Man.
This comic is awful. The story is a mess, the art is terrible, and the amount of insane traps this guy has built into this room for no obvious reason is killing me. While Spider-Man deals with the world’s most dangerous hall of records, Camino finds his son, and the art seems to show him heroically lifting the gigantic filing cabinet he shouldn’t be able to move while the text says he can’t (?) as fire creeps toward him and his son. He discovers the cabinets are full of corporate bearer bonds from all the companies this ESI has extorted as he’s… shoving them into the fire to “buy time?” How is fueling the fire “buying time?” Ugh, Headhunter triggers a magical ring of magnesium flares Spider-Man just happens to be standing perfectly in, blinding him, while Camino chucks one of the drawers of files into an exit door, exploding it, because he rightly assumed it was trapped like every other inch of THE MOST IMPORTANT ROOM IN THIS BUSINESS. I mean, this is asinine.
How is that pipe doing anything?!?! This art is awful! As you’d expect, Spider-Man just dodges the axe, having his Spider Sen and all, but it’s treated like this incredible heroic moment instead of something he does 50 times per month, and then takes out Headhunter in a single punch. Anticlimax, to say the least.
I forgot to mention this room where this corporation keeps seemingly millions of uncashed bonds is also Headhunter’s trophy room with a wall of heads in jars. This is so stupid.
Well, I’m glad that’s over. Not the highlight of the run. In the letter page, one absolute idiot writes to say Nathan Lubinsky is now his top suspect for Hobgoblin after Web 24. Another guy lists the creative teams and editorial staff of all Spider-Man titles the month he wrote in as suspects. This really went on too long, looks what it’s doing to people.