This comic, and all Marvel (And DC!) annuals in 1993 came in a polybag with a trading card inside. The very bags Tom DeFalco implored you to open last post. There are a lot of instances of Marvel & DC making a similar move at the same time throughout comics history, either intentionally or not. Like when both companies introduced a team of outcasts led by a guy in a wheelchair dedicated to saving a world that’s rejected them in 1963, too close together for any sort of corporate espionage. In this case, both companies introduced a new character in every single 1993 annual. DC did it as an event called Bloodlines. Alien parasites were creating superbeings or something. Marvel just did it, no overarching plot. Did each know what the other was doing? Not sure. Neither company produced a character with any true staying power with this stunt, but the Captain America annual introduced a rooster-and-boxing-themed guy called The Battling Bantam, so that sure was something. The closest thing to a big character to come of Marvel’s group was Genis-Vell, son of Captain Marvel, who, try as they might, never caught on. But they tried quite a few times, so he had a much longer shelf life than any of the others. He even appeared in the 12-issue Avengers Forever, one of the very best parts of Kurt Busiek’s very good run on Avengers. Annex here… uh, not so successful. I actually just opened this one to read it! Its immense value gone forever! (As of this writing, mycomicshop.com actually has an opened near mint copy listed for $2 more than an unopened one, asking a whopping $10. I don’t know who would possibly pay that, but for $2 less, you can get a free trading card!) I’ve not read this or any of these annuals. Very excited about my Annex trading card by this issue’s artist Tom Lyle, making I believe his first foray into the Spider-Titles, but obviously not the last (He drew the 2nd Venom miniseries, also, but that didn’t have Spider-Man in it). Jack C. Harris, Tom Lyle, the great Scott Hanna and Bob Sharen. Nothing says “this new character will be super relevant” like a writer who has nothing to do with Spider-Man introducing him! Spider-Man is swinging around when his Spider Sense goes off. Getting right to it.
Certainly doesn’t SEEM like more than your run of the mill exoskeletoned bad guy. Interesting to me how this art looks like Tom Lyle, but his Spider-Man is very different. Annex smashes through another wall while talking like a computer before materializing a jetpack and taking off. We cut to Mary Jane fretting about Peter more than usual just in time to see a TV news report about this fight. Then the phone rings.
Considering he doesn’t even know where Annex went, this does kinda seem like one he could pick up later.
I do not get this guy’s computer lingo.”Schema mode” has so far seemed to mean like 3 different things, and how does his backpack disappearing count as a “download?” Spider-Man attacks out of nowhere, and “Schema mode initiate” now means “get way stronger than before” as Annex snaps out of some webbing and swings Spider-Man right into some exposition…
So the guy giving the award Peter is up for both inexplicably has nothing to do with photography or journalism AND is about to wind up being Annex’s dad, wow. Spider-Man takes the now much more calm and still unnamed Annex back to where this started, discovering the place is a lab.
Comic writers in the 90s dealing with computer language will never not be funny to me. The doc takes them to a bigger, more sci fi room and begins explaining the absurd nonsense behind Annex. That they make artificial limbs out of “transmissable biological material” that can be sent over radio waves. If you’re wearing an “Annexing unit,” it can apparently send you a leg. Is the premise here that that jetpack he manifested was organic?? The doc further explains that this is the first test subject, and a glitch led to him “downloading his original personality and memory!” Which, in this case, I think means replacing it with computer programming, despite, you know, what “download” means. The doc says Annex’s personality is backed up and can be put back in place. Handy. The guy is able to get out of the suit and become himself again, one Alex Ellis, Desert Storm vet who lost a leg.
No less than Colin Powell then advocated for injured soldiers to get more advanced prosthetics, and Alex wound up a test subject for this nonsense. Insanely, the artificial leg grown out of biological matter is one of his costume’s boots. I assumed it was making him a normal leg inside, but no, we see the suit creating the boot for him…
Oh, right, sure. That’s even sillier. The doc presumes that Dunson “must have digitized his son’s emotions and thoughts before he left for the army.” Yes, of course, a total backup of the human brain with 1990 technology. Your son’s mind on 932 floppy disks, order now! Alex gets back in the suit and flies away to… attack the Dunson guy, but why? Getting in the suit erases your brain, dumby! At the awards ceremony, Dunson’s speech involves him talking crazy about “those who should have lived and those who should have died!”
This comic sucks.
So there’s a bunch of totally nonsensical technobabble, and Barto tells Spider-Man to go plug a power cable into a machine at the awards show, which will somehow do something back at the lab, and that somehow puts both dudes’ brains in Annex at the same time. So now “Davey” tells his dad grief has corrupted him, and his dad starts shooting.
Woof! What a stinker! I enjoyed the correct use of the word “download” on the last page. Annex would pop up in a few minor places here and there, and then SOMEHOW get his own miniseries in 1994. Then he would vanish… until someone decided to put him in a comic called the Initiative in the 2000s, a book that needed literally all the minor characters they could get. All sorts of nobodies who no one had thought of in ages were dusted off in there. And then that book went away, and that was it for Annex. The rest of this issue is 3 shorts about other Spider-Adjacent characters. There’s a Solo/Black Cat team-up involving a terrorist named DEATH STORM who seems like some kinda evil version of Solo, which is just setup for a Solo comic I didn’t read. Then there’s a Lizard story with Spider-Man in it, so I’ll talk about it. Mike Lackey, Aaron Lopresti, Andy Mushynsky and Renee Witterstaetter tell the tale of Curt Connors on trial for The Lizard’s crimes. His history is more or less recapped, Martha & Billy are put on the stand to testify. And then they get…
Objection, JJJ published that book without Peter’s consent and he didn’t get paid for it, as seen in ASM 304, your honor! What, they can’t hear me? Well, too bad.
Eventually, Curt just randomly stands up and starts talking, which is, like, really not supposed to happen, in my understanding, saying he thinks he should be incarcerated, but allowed to work on a cure for himself while locked up. He says he doesn’t feel that he’s guilty of The Lizard’s crimes, but he is responsible for them. I mean… fine line, but ok.
Well, that’s settled. Stay tuned for The Lizard’s next rampage about 9 months from now. Next, a genuinely incomprehensible John Jameson story. He gets some “space age riot gear” from a scientist and gets hired by some rich guy to bring home his geneticist son who’s experimented on himself. John fights the guy and brings him in, talking about how “his mission” is getting harder than he thought. What? What mission? Why did someone just hand him this dangerous gear for fun? This seems like a test to see is anyone’s interested in John as a terrible looking and as-yet-unnamed superhero. I don’t think there were any takers. The rest of the issue is a gallery of covers for the much-talked-about upcoming Maximum Carnage crossover. In a grim sign of what’s to come, it shows 9 covers and that’s not all of them. Man, I’m dreading that.