Here’s a weird one. The regular creative team is relegated to a back-up story, and the main feature is guests. Specifically, Joey Cavalieri scripting, Rurik Tyler penciling, Sam De La Rosa inking, with good ol’ Bob Sharen coloring. The back-up story is a lead-in to the next 2 issues. Why’s it structured like this? Very strange. We begin with the weird premise that The Shocker’s powers are out of control, and he’s running around leaving craters and crushing things and panicking. Can he not… take the gloves off? He worries he’s leaving a trail of destruction that’ll bring Spider-Man right to him, and 2 pages later, Spider-Man has spotted him smashing into an abandoned TV station. Except…
Shocky’s so out of control that our old pal Night Thrasher can’t even stand up, everything’s vibrating so badly. Then Shocker just leaves. Good talk. Thrash is worried because Shocker’s just caused a total power failure. Then Spidey finally manages to get inside. How’d it take him so long?
Come on, geniuses, he clearly thinks the McGuffin will help him control his situation. Thrash can inexplicably restore power to the security system but not the lights, and when they find Shocky in the dark, a zap from hi sets off the security system (??) and our heroes are too busy dodging lasers and missiles and stuff to worry about a supervillain. This plan of Night Thrasher’s is going great.
Shocky finds his way to the McGuffin, the heroes are still being very obtuse about it, Spidey tries to web up the doorway to prevent Shocker from reaching his goal, the vibration makes that fail.
Just… just take off the gloves, dumby!! How is this a story!? Shocky’s convinced he’s gonna vibrate himself to dust, and when asked why he didn’t seek help, he asks who would help him? Spide-rMan, that’s who, and now the 2 heroes just give Shocker the vest. Shocking! But it doesn’t work, and Spider-Man decides it has to be tuned to the frequency of Shocker’s blasts. Shouldn’t Thrasher know how this thing works?
Ok, fine. That was so goofy. The rest of the book is by the usual gang. First there’s a random 1-pager about Peter Parker setting up his new lab in the attic, with fantastical asides about turning it into a Batcave or a Danger Room. That’s all there is to that. This house is killing me. It’s huge. But they got so little out of it. We’re running out of space before we get to “I am the spider” gloom’n’doom combo’d into clone madness. There’s no regular stories, Peter is barely ever in this place. I guess that’s why they quickly and awkwardly got jammed in here in the background of Grant’s TAC run. Just so they would technically live somewhere during the mess to come, and logic and finances be damned. Well anyway, the rest of the book concerns The Lizard and Calypso, as promised. At a bar near The Vault, Calypso bewitches an off-duty guard into sneaking her into the prison, so you know…
Calypso keeps on rampaging as the bottom 3rd of each page becomes the mind of Curt Connors…
Well, that seems like bad news. 22 pages of savage terror, eh? We’ll see. And speaking of seeing, we’ve already seen how Calypso comes back from the dead, in Spider-Man Annual ‘97, so that’s another loop closed.