Yes, from the writer who brought you “Spider-Man somehow beats up Star-Lord” comes “Carnage is supposed to be a threat to The Silver Surfer.” I’ve never read this, because I think Carnage sucks and passed on this when it came out. This would prove a costly mistake, but that story goes with next issue. This issue looks and feels like it’s never been opened. It’s the new regular team of Tom DeFalco, Joe Bennett, Bud Larosa and Bob Sharen, tho I’m not sure if they know Bennett is permanent yet. Fine with me, tho. As we get rolling, Spider-Man is flipping through the sky with excitement because he’s fresh in from helping The FF & The Avengers come back from Franklin Richards’ pocket dimension.
We get a look at the T-Bolts to try to sell their comic for a few panels, then Spider-Man swings off because he’s late for class at ESU. Then why was he here in the first place??? I hate lazy stuff like this. Meanwhile, we cut to Joe Bennett really channeling John Buscema’s Silver Surfer…
Man, I forgot about the Mir space station. We go to ESU to see MJ being mad at Peter for putting his suit on, and him saying now that the Heroes have Returned, he won’t feel as pressured to be Spider-Man, and he’s going on hiatus. He walks off musing about how he’s said this before, but it’s serious this time, so we immediately cut to Carnage breaking out of Ravencroft. The new boss since Ashley Kafka got fired for gross incompetence proves even stupider than she is, saying it costs too much to keep all the special security measures in place for Carnage and turning some of them off, allowing him to bust loose instantly. Bureaucrats, man, sheesh. We cut to The Bugle, where Robbie and JJJ have the same conversation they have every time we see them in this period, blah, and then Robbie goes off to worry about how Martha hates him working at The Bugle now, as usual in ASM in this period, blah, and then…
Oh no, right? I mean, killing Joe’s wife just to make him angry is totally something they’d do in 1997, and Carnage loves nothing more than killing people. She must be cut to bits, right? Well, after we go see MJ with Jill and Shantal at school as she learns Carnage escaped and assumes Peter went after him, we see this…
Carnage sucks! Why do the writers do this so often? He loves killing people, he has no morals, no scruples, and yet they always put a character he can’t kill in front of him and have to come up with some stupid reason he didn’t kill them. I hate it. Peter has run off to become Spider-Man before he even realizes he’s doing it, and then thinks he hopes MJ can understand as he swings off. I hate this, too. How many times did he have to promise her he’d quit when no one, including the creative team, the readers, or Peter himself, believed it? Ugh. Carnage is walking away in his street clothes, thinking about how he doesn’t want to stop killing people even as he’s just spared Martha for NO REASON, when he decides to kill a snooty business guy for illegally parking in a handicapped spot. Sheesh.
Spider-Cheeks? The Silver Surfer flies by and sees his sometimes pal Spider-Man fighting a goo monster and decides to lend a hand.
Remember how they expressly said Carnage didn’t have a symbiote anymore in Maximum Carnage? Remember how I grumbled that that got dropped immediately? Well, here you go.
And so, this story goes from dumb to incredibly dumb, and my troubles begin.