Need a giant asterisk by that bottom blurb. I mean, ok, Captain America would fit that bill, but… who are they kidding? It’s JM DeMatteis’ turn on Spider-Man, and this month, Tom Lyle provides finishes for Scott Hanna & Al Milgrom, so something slipped on the schedule. It;s interesting to me how Milgrom is the go-to guy in the Spider-Office when they need an inker. Anyway, the chaos downtown is on TV, and the supporting cast is watching said TV, and that’s our recap, which is better than the usual.
Well, Richard sure got DeMatteis-y quickly.
Get ‘im, MJ. Is that Aunt May knowing Peter is Spider-Man? I think DeMatteis had probably she knew by now. An interesting thing to consider. Well, at any rate, Carnage is still torturing Venom, saying he’s going to keep it up for weeks, keep him alive as long as possible before killing him. I get that he hates Venom super alot and all, but I still feel like with Carnage, it’s quantity over quality. He should be out there shredding innocent people. This doesn’t really make sense to me. Venom’s symbiote reaches out, and Carnage thinks he needs to zap Venom with the sonic gun again, but when he brandishes it, a bunch fo Venom goop comes out, and Eddie drops the scared act.
Alrighty. Elsewhere, Cloak is yelling at a church, still believing he’s there for a reason, but nothing happens yet. Then to the heroes and Shriek and the mob and such. An unusually mean Cap is leading Deathlok (And only Deathlok?) toward Shriek, now flanked by all the other losers on Evil Team. Shriek, of course, is brand new, and hasn’t got a back story yet, and if you thought ol’ JM would let one villain slip by without making a gross correlation between being abused as a child and becoming a serial killer, well, you don’t know his oeuvre.
The baddies take the chance to just leave, yet again. Firestar surrounds some people in a wall of flame, blathering internally about her moral conundrum (I’m sorry, what? Being conflicted about killing Carnage is one thing, but these are regular people, what are you even saying, Angelica?). Iron Fist walks into the middle of a bunch of them and does some vaguely Orientalist non-violent mysticism that snaps them out of their frenzy for a second, but then the spell is broken, and since he’s in a DeMatteis comic, he goes from MLK to The Punisher in 4 panels until…
One thing we’ve learned on this blog is Spider-Man really hates chimneys. The comic takes a bizarre split page approach for 2 pages, Spidey on top, Cloak on bottom. Spider-Man succumbs to despair, remembers his dad saying you have to be a mean and tuff and whatever, then remembers Aunt May saying, “nuh-uh” and stops being sad all in 6 panels, while Cloak is suddenly overwhelmed by a huge flash of light, to the surprise of no one. Can’t very well have a guy just called “Cloak” without a “Dagger,” it ruins the bit. Anyway…
Doppelganger doesn’t take kindly to this, so Carnage starts beating the crap out of him, too (STILL not killing anyone despite that being his entire deal, this story sucks SO BAD), then tells everyone to get back in line. Demogoblin instead announces he’ll be leaving, having finally gotten tired of his participation in this story not making a lick of sense, but he’s waited too long.
I believe we see here the first instance of Lyle’s weird habit of shading the bottom of Spider-Man’s face regardless of whether it makes any sense, which he will continue to do all the time.
Golly, what a shocker. Hey, where did Nightwatch go? I guess Morbius has to sleep til nighttime or whatever, but what’s Nighty’s excuse for bouncing on the crisis? Man this story is a mess. But it’s almost over now, finally. Tune in next time for more DeMisery.