You know the crazy thing about this series? I have this vague memory of it feeling kind of exciting at the time. Not the series itself, per se, but the fact that all this additional Spider-Man product was coming out. I’ve talked elsewhere about the undeniable excitement of the early clone period, how crazy and dangerous it seemed. Love it or hate it, the new direction felt radical. This was wrapped up in that, even tho it all takes place before the clone crap got started. Well, hey, Anthony Williams is suddenly the penciler on this issue. Does each one have a different artist? That would be weird. We start with MJ in the jungle, mad at herself for taking this job.
We check in on Spider-Man, approaching the police precinct, dismayed to see it under armed guard. He’s decided to go see if they have any of his killer webbing. This guy is really running in circles. He leaps onto their roof as we cut to MJ rescuing her man in the movie. Inside the precinct, some generic cop caricature calls in… The Extreme Emergency Team. What? First off all, that’s dopey, and second of all, why not Code: Blue? They’re right there, waiting to be in this.
Literally just use Code: Blue! Not that they’re cool, either, but this is exactly what they’re supposed to be! I can’t believe they bothered to name these jobbers. Well, Spider-Man gets spotted on the roof and has to run for it.
“They train 6 whole months to get to shoot people, I’ve only been doing this for ‘5 years!’” Spider-Man jumps around the city being yelled at by regular people at their windows and feeling worse. Man this comic is spinning its wheels. A “man on the street” piece is filmed below with everyone hating him, and then he finds it very difficult to travel around the city because cops are everywhere looking for him. We are 15 pages into this comic and nothing has happened. We’re 47 pages into this series and 1 thing has happened! Yeeeeeesh!
Yeah, that’s the big piece of evidence, not the GUARD IN A COMA YOU DIDN’T HURT. Ay yi yi, this comic is killing me. Super Extra Cop Force is coordinating their Spider-Man response in their “command center,” doing absolutely nothing like the rest of this story. Then when Spider-Man returns to the scene of the crime, like 40 zillion cops are there, and he blunders in, anyway. Somehow, nothing continues to happen. Spider-Man just stands there, rehashing what he knows about the case and thinking he can’t let them take him in (Duh). Then finally, on page 20, he sees a cop seeing him and tries to flee. The cop says he’s got special rounds just for Spider-Man.
Tracking mist. Whatever. Spider-Man stops in his flight to save a bag lady about to be hit by a speeding car, and that allows the Extremely Lame Force to drop a giant net on him. Wow. Were they driving the car, too?
Man I don’t care. Even filler can be endearing if it’s fun. This series is so obviously a cash grab. I cannot imagine why I bought it as a teen. Did the “Spider-Man: Killer!” angle actually work on me? I know I was the kind of idiot comic collector who woulda bought the remaining 2 issues even if I didn’t like the first one. Who knows?