For the first time in a long time, I can tell you exactly where I got this comic. And when I first read it, which is not the same time. I first saw it as an elementary school kid, reading a copy belonging to a classmate. I found this book utterly horrific at that age. In 2015, I was at New York Comic-Con, and while I was not really in the habit of back issue hunting at cons, a friend’s time spent in the stacks made me try to think of something I didn’t have, and I got this. It’s in very nice condition. A battle between these 2 surely did numbers, especially in the late 80s. But the comic itself? Well… We’ll see. Priest is at the helm, with MD Bright on pencils, the legend Al Williamson inking, and Petra Scotse coloring. Priest and Bright have a pretty long working history together after this book, creating cult favorite Quantum & Woody, reuniting on Priest’s Black Panther for a bit, and other things, but I don’t think I’ve ever thought to wonder if this is where it started, or if it goes back further. It opens on Wolverine telling us the tale of himself and his friend Charlie, trying to escape the Communist side of the Berlin wall at some point in the past (Wolverine is in his yellow & blue suit, which he’d not worn in almost a decade, at this point), and pursued by some heavy hitters. As Wolverine faces down the small army of former deep cover operatives blowing their missions to try to kill Charlie, he tells us Charlie was his best friend.
Wolverine went into his patented berserker rage, from back when he was a genuinely dangerous character, before the success of the X-Men movies drove him to become pretty much thoroughly de-fanged. When he regained his senses, everyone was dead, and Charlie was gone, leaving behind a heart-shaped charm, “a private joke between us.” Logan says he never saw Charlie again. Cut to Spider-Man, swinging through Manhattan and explaining his deal, in case you somehow don’t know it.
Biff… RIFKIN? Probably not. They should bring that guy back. As a supervillain.
This is, of course, Sophie & Burt’s only appearance. Peter goes to The Daily Bugle, portrayed as the bustling and chaotic place it should be for the first time in a long time, and Kate Cushing loves his photos of the brutally murdered couple, saying they’re much better than his usual quality. Then JJJ comes and grabs him. He’s trying to send him on another globetrotting wild goose chase for NOW Magazine when Ned bursts into his office, looking deadly serious, wanting to talk in private. Peter takes the chance to slip away.
Peter and MJ leave the house to go see a movie. There are some cool shots of Times Square that don’t really serve much of a purpose.
A sniper is shooting up the place. Peter ducks into an alley to change in another sequence that seems like it didn’t have to take so long. I guess this book had to be oversized and cost $2.50 somehow.
This is fun, huh? By now, comics have really started getting excited about “mature” stories, which usually just means bleak and violent, taking all the wrong lessons from Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns. “Was it the fact that Watchmen was maybe the most meticulously crafted comic ever made? Was it the fact that The Dark Knight Returns managed the strange feat of seeming utterly fresh and taking the character back to his roots at the same time? No, I think it was just how no one in either title was having a good time, that’s what made them sell so well.” And here we seem to have Priest’s entry into that world. Even compared to Peter’s sour mood in ASM, this is a whole new level. Something really weird going on with the printing in this book. Like the black is a different kind of ink, reacting differently to the paper. The right amount of black on a light background looks like it’s floating off the page, and the wrong amount of black under a color makes it look all messed up.
Why’d he call Ned “Jake?” Well, anyway, there you go. Only a matter of time before Wolverine’s back in this story, given its title and all, but now we see how it’s gonna happen. And here he is, back in Germany, having also figured out that these killings were his old friend murking KGB agents. We see a flashback to him running out on the X-Men at one of their lowest points, right after the aptly named Mutant Massacre event (Wolverine’s FIRST meeting with Sabretooth somehow!), to go deal with Charlie, so serious is this. He’s been looking for Charlie in Berlin for days, and is now being tailed by some pretty bad spies.
The goons think better of it and walk away, but then they’re shot, courtesy of the still-unseen Charlie. The next day, Wolverine’s wandering the streets, thinking about going home, when he passes Peter and Ned, loudly arguing about whether they should give up on looking for this Charlemagne. And while Logan’s never seen Peter’s face, his mutant senses tag Spider-Man immediately.
Why’d he bring his Spider-Gear? What possible explanation could there be, for him wanting to “get away from Spider-Man,” and then bring his stuff? It just feels sloppy. But something pretty important is coming…
Well. That’s something. You didn’t see a lot of slit throats in comics before this, but it’s 1987. A grim, sudden, and rather anticlimactic death for a long-serving cast member. And a prime Hobgoblin suspect, too, it must be said.
Wolverine tells Peter to leave town, and he’s really on his way, at a train station, when he realizes if Wolverine hadn’t led him away from the hotel, Ned might still be alive. He’s not even sure Wolverine didn’t have something to do with it. Thinking with great power comes great responsibility, he turns back around and tries to go get some closure. He finds a costume shop, but it’s closed. He talks his way in, anyway.
And so we have the ridiculous, ridiculous origin of the costume we saw way back in Block 8. But Spider-Man needed to be Spider-Man, and I wonder if someone up the food chain didn’t think Spider-Man should be in his classic suit for a special issue like this. Spidey’s tracer lets him know Wolverine’s snuck into East Berlin, and through a comical sequence of him trying to sneak over the wall, but mobbed by people seeing his costume, he leaps across himself in a hail of gunfire. He has to get past explosives, razorwire and a lot more guns, but is soon loose in East Berlin and on the hunt for Wolverine.
Yes, Charlie, who has never been referred to as “he,” is the woman Peter saw on the street days ago. She explains that she’s left her considerable money to Wolverine. That she’s made too many enemies, and now every agency in the world is after her. Logan just replies that he’s here now. Charlie & Logan go out to a fancy dinner. The dessert is poisoned, and they know it. Charlie says everyone in the room is going to start trying to kill them soon, and they should just enjoy themselves while they can.
Charlie produces an Uzi and the 3 of them get to work on the army of baddies. In the chaos, Charlie escapes, evading even Logan’s nose. The heroes try to go find her. A little more exposition.
Wolverine gets to slicing folks up, but Spider-Man rambles internally about being an amateur and scared and useless and worried he’ll kill someone. I have never understood this. Priest just turns Spider-Man into a chump. He’s been through so much weird stuff! How is this scarier than going to Europe to track down The Red Skull over his parents when he was still a teenager, to cite just one example? I just don’t get it. Spidey and Logan don’t find Charlie, and hit several other KGB spots to no greater success.
No way in hell Spider-Man would use the word “bimbo.” No way.
Soon, Wolverine meets Charlie in a cemetery. His narration tells us they both know she’ll never survive after what she’s done, and they both know she called him here to kill her clean before the various agencies can get ahold of her. And, in typical Wolverine fashion, he’s all set to do just that, but can’t at the last minute.
And so the battle is finally joined. Wolverine’s trying to explain what’s going on, but Spider-Man isn’t listening, the same dope he was all through Gang War. Spider-Man begins to get scared he’s going to die, begins to see Wolverine will definitely kill him if he can.
And that’s that. We next see them presenting fake passports to leave Berlin, Peter’s narration saying he doesn’t know where Logan got them. Then they enter the airport and part without a word. Then Peter is on a plane back to NY. Then Peter is back in his apartment, thinking about how he wants to blame all this on Spider-Man, but he knows that makes no sense. Through all this, he’s haunted by that panel of him punching Charlie over and over, unable to think about anything else. Then JJJ calls.
For all its grim-dark-late-80s-ness, this was at least well staged. Not the mess the Gang War came out to be. Just not really something I can get too excited about. And I imagine the legion of 12-year olds shelling out $2.50 for this when comics cost 75 cents wondering what on Earth they just read. I sure didn’t like it when I was a kid! Where were the jokes? Why was it so mean? I didn’t have the language to describe what I didn’t like about it at the time. Now I just think it’s a wholly unnecessary bummer. But, anyway. here’s where the behind-the-scenes story of the Hobgoblin goes from chaotic and messy to down right mean. This issue was published the same month as part 2 of Gang War, and so was written well in advance. Tom DeFalco was as dead set on Ned Leeds being The Hobgoblin as Priest was dead set against it. And so, being the editor, he just added a one-shot to the schedule that killed Ned Leeds to put an end to that. People around the office at the time have said they think he did it purely to spite DeFalco. But, by the time it saw print, Tom was already no longer a factor. So, Stern’s original plan is long abandoned, the character Tom had been pointing all his clues at is dead, Tom’s out as writer, Priest is out as editor, and after more than 4 years of turmoil and red herrings, someone has to decide… who’s The Hobgoblin?