We’re almost ready to hit Michelinie’s final ASM story, but first, this blatant cash grab. This actually saw print much later, the same months as ASM 392-394, but takes place before ASM 386. They always manage to put out stuff too late when there’s a big event to work around. I bought all 3 issues of this pointless miniseries as they came out, but I sure don’t remember it. I was sorta surprised to find them in my collection. I remember the cover of the first issue well enough to know I had it, but what it’s about? No idea. This filler is writer by Jack C. Harris, the Annex guy, with art by Scott Kolins, Sam DeLaRosa and Bob Sharen (Who else?). So this is gonna be bad, I deem. We open on Spider-Man beating up some would be burglars, too hard, and then running off as the cops arrive, only to start moping on a roof that he’s being too rough because MJ has left him. News to me! Seems like something that’d be covered in the main titles. Then something catches his attention.
Kolins is oddly better here than he will be in those dreadful SMU issues he has coming up. Still pretty rough, though. Well, I’m sure that disgruntled guy won’t have anything to do with allegations that Spider-Man has turned killer…
And now for the absolute garbage reveal:
Yes, Spider-Man s depressed, angry and despondent because MJ… has gone out of town for awhile. Dumb! He is also, for some reason, back at the place where he ran afoul of the strikers earlier, and sees someone trying to break in. Guess who it is. You’re right. Spidey webs that guy to a wall, then when he won’t stop yelling, webs his mouth, too. He swings down to a security guard below to let him know the guy’s up the fire escape, but as soon as Spider-Man leaves, that guard gets clubbed unconscious.
There really isn’t any gag that won’t see use over and over. I guess it’s inevitable when you’re working on something that’s gone on for decades, sometimes producing as much as 170 pages of content per month. Peter reads all about how he put a guard in a coma and killed that guy, then decides to head down to The Bugle to try to learn more. He worries that guy somehow did die in his web (Tho that wouldn’t explain the guard, dumby), and notes people are scared of him as he swings around. Arriving at work, over the sound of JJJ crowing, Peter hears a reporter on TV say they have surveillance camera footage of Spider-Man’s brutal attack (He coulda learned this without leaving the house!).
The… the Bugle said the guard is in a coma!! Do you think you went into a fugue state and also did that?? Did Scott Kolins go rogue and add that to the paper and no one noticed? This is stupid. Leaving The Bugle, Spidey spots a situation in an alley, some cops in a stand off with a guy who took a hostage. He webs the guy to the wall, and then that guy and the cops freak out about Spider-Man trying to kill him. Our sorry, stupid hero goes home, wishing he could talk to MJ, but he can’t even figure out how to reach her. And speaking of whom…
Our hero (finally!) decides to go investigate the pharmaceutical company, reasoning that maybe the thief had some stuff on him that altered his webbing. As he prepares to head out, he decides he can’t use his webbing until he knows it’s safe (GUARD IN COMA), and will have to rely solely on his powers. “After all, I’ve had my POWERS longer than I’ve had my WEB-SHOOTERS!” Only like 24 hours longer, tops, dude. He then proceeds to not even check out the chemicals at the pharma company, he just looks for traces of his webbing, finds none, and then decides to go home and analyze the rest of that batch. This is a comic about Peter Parker going on unnecessary errands.
I knew this was going to be irrelevant, but I was hoping it at least wouldn’t be incompetent. This feels like it was a script for a fill-in issue that got expanded to a 3-issue miniseries to appease the gods of marketing. And lucky me, I got all 3 of them.