Finally, we come to the end of this sorry disaster. It didn’t occur to me that Tom DeFalco writing SMU 1 was so unusual. He appears so frequently on the blog, and he’s not far from taking over TAC at this time, I just rolled with it, but I guess Unlimited is his first regular Spider-Man gig since 1986. Kind of ironic. Priest said his idea to deal with Shooter wanting DeFalco off ASM because he blew all his deadlines due to his duties as Executive Editor was to offer him a quarterly Spider-Man title to write more at his own pace, which DeFalco rejected. And he returns to the Spider-Office 6 years later on… a quarterly title. Likely because he didn’t (yet) feel he had time for a monthly due to his duties as Editor-in-Chief. Just funny, is all. Also kind of weird that, if this really is DeMatteis’ hideous, mutant baby, he didn’t bring this in for a landing himself. But, he does not, and DeFalco is joined for part one of this story by Mark Bagley, ever-reliable pinch hitter, on breakdowns, Sam De La Rosa on finishes, anf John Kalisz on colors. And who better to join the big showdown between Venom, a character Bags has really taken visual ownership of, and Carnage, who he co-created? Despite what the cover was selling, Carnage lunges at Venom on page one. Spider-Man supposes Carnage must’ve “covered one of his victims in a mock symbiote suit,” and sure, why not, at this point, so he could do his hilariously over dramatic entrance last issue. Venom doesn’t care about any of that, he’s just super psyched to get to kill Carnage after all. Carnage is unhinged, still feeling the effects of the Good Vibe Gun, and they launch into a brutal battle.
“I cannot – I must not die!” is pure stock DeFalco villain, and entirely out of character for redneck brute Cletus Kasady.
Venom once again being the only person talking sense is a terrible sign. We cut away to Nightwatch & Morbius watching what we’re told is one of many “spontaneous block parties” that have broken out on the erroneous news that Carnage is dead. They say a bunch of dumb things and then part with the worry that they may next meet as foes. I rather doubt they next meet at all, but I sure wasn’t buying either of their comics, so I’ll never know. Meanwhile, in an emergency room, Mary Jane is recoiling at how much it’s like a war zone when she meets a pregnant lady frantically awaiting news of her husband. A doctor appears to say he’s going to be fine, and then MJ’s reason for being there appears.
Shouldn’t the bones of someone who can lift a bus be proof against a tiny woman’s hug, broken or not? These sort of things always trip me up. Elsewhere, Carnage improbably returns to the prison cell he shared with Brock where he became Carnage, smashing through the window and furious to discover a new inmate in there. But then Venom catches up and they brawl in the place where they met. Venom takes a bunch of sharpened Carnage bits in the gut saving a security guard, giving Carnage time to get ahead of him.
All this crashing into the gang dealing with Harry’s death probably seemed like a good idea. A way to avoid a bunch of sad issues. But it’s a pretty crappy thing to do to such an important cast member. Harry’s death is the worst thing to happen to Peter since Gwen’s, but you’d never know it to read this.
Ominous! And yes, that’s what The Avengers look like right now. Random jackets and vests are very much in style for the Avengers, The X-Men AND the FF in 1993, it’s wild. That’s Hercules with the mullet, Sersi abandoning her usual colors, and that loser Thunderstrike sitting in for Thor. Props to Tom DeFalco for landing that moment between Peter & Richard even tho he’s not really been involved in thier larger story or their conflict during this one. Later that night, MJ wakes up to find Peter exposing a bunch of film he allegedly found time to shoot during the riots, saying he can’t bear to profit off all that misery. But then he suits up to go stop Carnage, and anticipated more trouble with MJ for it.
Not the best way to patch them up, but they only have so many pages, I guess. One would assume some kind of send off for the other heroes would be warranted, in addition to Nightwatch and Morbius, but with Peter & his dad having their talk and now Peter & MJ having this, all that remains is to finally bring Carnage down. Spider-Man swings off, yelling to no one in particular that he’s gonna bring Carnage down his way, and the only way Carnage will be able to stop him is by killing him. And that ends part 2 of chapter 14 of this nonsense. Part 2 picks up with Ron Lim drawing and Jim Sanders III & De La Rosa inking. Carnage is now cowering on the floor of the orphanage we just keep returning to , seeing the ghosts of his bullies. That doesn’t help him when Venom shows up. Fight fight fight, Carnage says he’s “the true master of death!” which is hilarious…
An evergreen In Living Color reference by Venom. Spider-Man hasn’t a leg to stand on here. Venom sums up it up perfectly, “Kasaday only feels alive when he’s taking lives.” He can’t be rehabilitated or reasoned with. Leaving him alive makes you responsible for all his future rampages. And boy, are they coming. Makes Spider-Man look like a selfish idiot. Which is what you want in a Spider-Man comic! Spider-man shouldn’t want to kill EVERY villain, but even Superman’s killed people from time to time when it was absolutely necessary. This is one of those times. But Carnage is too popular to kill, so we just have to make Spider-Man look like an idiot. They do manage a funny bit where Venom says he feels responsible for every bad thing Carnage does, only to let Spider-Man say he feels the same way about Venom, which stops Eddie dead in his tracks. But by then, Carnage has escaped thanks to the two dunmbies fighting. Elsewhere, MJ is diligently playing her current role in this title, standing by a window in revealing clothes, doing nothing with her life but worrying about Peter, when Felicia Hardy calls. She say she’s been talking to Flash and they wondered if Peter was home, and she learns what’s up. She considers going to try to help, but as she was utterly defeated and could have been killed last time we saw her, she thinks that would be suicide.
So if Spider-Man won’t kill Carnage, couldn’t he let Venom pull all his arms & legs off? Put him in a box somewhere? Why does he have to remain perfectly capable of just breaking loose and killing more people? Venom starts whomping on Carnage, Spider-Man saying “even a murdering creep like Kasaday deserves better!”, just completely out of touch with reality. Spider-Man comes between them, now pleading that, because they know about Kasaday’s terrible childhood, “he never had a chance! In his fashion, he just may be the most innocent of all!” and that’s why he deserves to live. As if his choices were not his own. Disgusting! Here’s what Spidey gets for that impassioned co-signing of mass murder:
Too bad they spoiled Felicia’s last minute save in the letter column when they were talking to that weirdo who was obsessed with her!
“Killing Carnage would be wrong, unless Venom did it to save us, which would make him a hero! That only applies to us, tho, not to anyone else on planet Earth!”
Carnage will return in the next Amazing Spider-Man Annual, and then again in the clone nonsense we’ve already seen, and then all sorts of other places and eventually be retconned into the avatar of an intergalactic death god who chose Kasady in the womb (No, really), so sorry, Spider-Man, you have the blood of thousands on your hands! It’s so insane to me. I was not a fan of the grim’n’gritty 90s, as I have said. I liked my adventures light and my heroes heroic. I was and am 100% for Spider-Man killing Carnage, because it was the only sensible thing to do. I was as 90s as it gets about this. And they still didn’t give me what I wanted. But there it is, the sad, soggy end. Despite this being a story about a team of serial killers, not a single named character died. Oh, sure, a bunch of of regular people died, but even Spider-Man doesn’t seem to care about them, why should I? Not one villain, not one hero dying in this seems absurd. But, well, it’s over! I’ve been dreading having to read it pretty literally for years as I worked my way to this point, and now I never have to read it again. And I feel pretty sure I probably won’t. But wait, there’s more! This is Spider-Man Unlimited, after all, an annual-sized comic, even after that extra-long finale, there’s room for more comic. It’s brought to us by Kurt Busiek, Steven Butler, Bud LaRosa, and John Kalisz. Was this Butler’s test run for Web? Could be. I believe he draws a short-lived Silver Sable series between this and Web. Or maybe during or after? I dunno, somewhere in the 90s. What I find interesting here, as Spider-Man chases a very 90s looking hood through the rain from the scene of a robbery while an as-yet-unknown narrator tells us we should go to the movies, is how much less it looks like Mark Bagley than his eventual debut on Web…
A nice dilemma from Busiek. Not much trace of the Web of Spider-Man artist at all. Not only in Spider-Man, but in Peter & Mary Jane, as we see them at the premiere of a movie the company that makes MJ’s soap put out, and see the narration is a speech by its star, a Dirk Leyden. As they exit, MJ is talking about how it’s an Australian production and all sorts of people from the company were invited to this event. But then Peter spots some feds starting to block the exits, and wonders what’s going on.
Spider-Man is on the case, musing that he’s never heard of this guy as a movie star OR a supervillain, which is pretty funny. He catches up to him in, what else, an empty warehouse, wallowing in self-pity.
This guy turning to a life of crime because he’s seen too many movies is pretty funny. Busiek is once again on his game. I wish he’d gotten a mainline Spider-Title around this time instead of eventually getting Untold Tales. He coulda done even better stuff there. A lady in the building next door sees the light and calls the cops, while Megawatt tells us he got his powers from Jonas Harrow. That guy has just littered the street with Z-list villains. Spidey is soon told Megawatt was defeated by Daredevil in his first-ever supervillain job.
I was pretty sure Butler swiped a Spider-Man earlier, and certain he swiped a Daredevil during the flashback, but I let them go. But this Erik Larsen swipe from ASM 350 is too much for me! Come on, man! Well, you know, fight fight fight for a couple pages, I believe Butler swipes a John Byrne Spider-Man, and then it’s time to wrap up.
Not a terribly important or well-illustrated story, but more entertaining than the preceding 14-part disaster by a mile! Where do we go from here? Would you believe… Canada?