That Shawn McManus cover has a lil something going on, a little moxie, that is not present in this series’ interiors. It’s almost cruel, suggesting that perhaps something interesting will be going on inside. It’s the same team as last month. Spider-Man has been captured and Beetle’s hearing all about it on TV, lovin it. You might think Beetle would get more than 1 panel to talk about that, but no, we’re off to prison, where Spider-Man is recapping the same story a different way for some reason, CONTINUING to INSIST that he might actually be a murderer and then thinking, “but I don’t think so.” I am not surprised Jack Harris only wrote 19 stories for Marvel (A full 6 of them about Annex).
I am… vexed. If Spider-Man, who can lift a city bus, was planning to break out of jail, WHY DID HE WAIT THIS LONG? Am I to believe he can’t break those bars? Am I to believe he can’t punch a hole right through the wall? I do not. I shall not. JJJ and whatsherface from Code: Mauve start yelling at each other and Spider-Man hops on top of a truck to get away quicker. Then he does what anyone would do in his position: He kidnaps the guy who was reporting about his capture on TV. Really.
I am… not having a good time. JAKE N. BINNERS. Because, of course, Beetle’s real name is…
I hate this series so much. Don’t worry, Beetle, it actually was a coincidence! Because this comic sucks! Spider-Man swings around getting yelled at by people yet again until Beetle attacks him.
I assume I’m meant to read Spider-Man’s exclamation like when the Scooby Doo gang pulls off the monster’s mask. They battle across town for a while, Spider-Man handily outsmarting Beetle at every turn, and then the dumby decides to tell Spider-Man what happened for no reason.
Because I am a nice person at heart, I was eager to say I like the awed joke there, but then the utterly lazy “Sure, what the heck?” at the bottom ruined it for me.
The security guard, Spider-Man. Remember him? In a coma? You didn’t do it? And yet you spent almost this entire series not noticing?
The worst part of this is how Spider-Man has just been a dumb dope the whole time. Did he solve this mystery? No, he just got Beetle to confess. Instead, he ran around on various side quests he didn’t even usually finish until the guy with a danger sense and super reflexes allowed himself to be CAUGHT IN A NET and put in a REGULAR PRISON CELL. They keep on fighting and that news team sees them, even though they’re so high up, at night, that they would probably just be specks, and the news guy can’t figure out why Spider-Man would be doing this. Then Spider-Man beats on Beetle so bad he doesn’t notice they’ve flown back down into the city, and he hops off Beetle airlines. Then he just runs away, and Beetle follows, of course. Spider-Man thinks this is just what he wanted, “so my PLAN will work!” Buddy, not one plan you’ve had for the last 2.75 issues has amounted to much, I wouldn’t bank on it, at this point.
You mean to tell me your security cameras have tapes in them, but you also have tapes… somewhere else? What sense does that make? Why have it in the camera where Beetle can mess with it at all? How’d it take this many days to do an autopsy? High profile case like this? I’m so glad this is almost over.
“Jungles to hewn through?” Maybe don’t quote Shakespeare, man. I hope that guy doesn’t vanity search his name and find this. These comics were awful. Maybe it wasn’t his fault, maybe my theory about it being a single issue plot stretched out is true. If this had been a single issue, it probably woulda been fine. No time for Spider-Man to bumble around accomplishing nothing for dozens of pages. I’ll choose to believe it wasn’t his fault. With this disaster out of the way, we can finally get to the main disaster in ASM. Just kidding! Time for another detour!